


The Veterinarian's Assistant

by secretfanboy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Stiles, Canonical Character Death, Hurt Derek, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Major Stiles Power fantasy, Slow Build, Stiles is the BAMF!-iest BAMF! in all of BAMF! town, This gets seriously violent, Vengeful Stiles, Violence, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretfanboy/pseuds/secretfanboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek picked Stiles up and carried him in his arms.  Stiles felt ridiculous and thought about squirming out of Derek's hold, but then he thought about how he was crushed against Derek's body and that was a really good thing that he really, really didn't want to stop happening.</p><p> </p><p>Growing tired of feeling powerless, Stiles decides it's time to get himself some new skills.  Taking this path changes him in ways he didn't expect when he finds love and then loses it.  He knew becoming stronger would change his position within the packs, what he doesn't expect is how it would change his relationships with Scott, his father, and most of all Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: This gets seriously violent at points and a lot of people die or are maimed. You've been warned.
> 
> The sexiness rating on this might go up when/if Derek ever makes it past second base.

The bell on the front door clanged as Dr. Deaton was convincing a cat to take a pill.  "Just a moment!" he called out toward the lobby.  He turned back to the cat and looked her square in the eyes, "There could be some kitten out there that's seriously ill and I need you to stop fussing and take this right now."  The cat seemed to acknowledge his statement and accepted the pill and the accompanying treat.  "Thanks," he said stroking her and putting her back in her cage.

When he walked into the lobby of his office he saw Stiles, his red hoodie torn and dirty, a scrape across his left cheek, dirt and blood on his hands.  The teen's eyes were swollen red and downcast.

"Stiles?  Scott's not here right now."

"I'm not here to see Scott, I'm here to see you."

"Me?"

"I want you to train me."

"I already have Scott as an assistant."

The boy stood there and inhaled deeply, wound so tight he was shuddering lightly.

"Isaac almost died tonight.  Scott, who is the only family I have besides my dad, almost died tonight.  Derek Hale, who doesn't particularly even like me, almost died tonight protecting me.  And what am I?  I am useless!"  The teen raised his swollen tearing eyes to meet Dr. Deaton's.  "I am...so tired...of being useless.  I don't want to be useless anymore.  I want you to train me."

He looked at the boy who had seen more trauma than those many times his age.  Would training the boy protect him from danger or would it just push him further into the line of fire?

"I'm not a witch Stiles."

"Then train me to be...a veterinarian."

*****

Stiles had been very good about studying the herb books that Deaton had given him.  He'd scanned the plant identification images and put them into a flash card app on his phone which had impressed Deaton a lot.  He'd chided the school administration for not offering a botany class and even started growing a few herbs in the disused planter beds in his back yard.  You never know when you might needs some Wolfsbane or Vervain.

He'd even started to practice meditating, taking a class at the community center, which Stiles initially thought was a little silly.  He had to admit it was helping his ADD, which Deaton said it would.  He was taking much less Adderall than before.  However progress on his training was moving a little too slow for Stiles and he wanted to push his mentor further.

He walked into the veterinary clinic and plopped the heavy botanical tome he was carrying onto the exam table.

"Done.  Quiz me.  Ask me anything."

Deaton looked up with his gentle smile.  "I believe you."

"I was thinking that maybe you could start me on something else."

"Something else?

"Plants and meditation are fun, but I'm getting pretty well along with the herbs and I'm practically Captain Meditation.  I was thinking that maybe it's time we moved to the next lesson in the curriculum."

"You do, do you?" said Deaton, raising his eyebrows to Stiles.

"Unless you're going to look at me creepily, 'cause then maybe I can wait a little longer."

Dr. Deaton smiled.  "I suppose I could show you something, it's outside of my field, but the exercises are easy enough to understand should you express any natural talent."

"Is it telekinesis?  Or..."  Stiles eyes grew wide.  "Pyrokinesis!?!"

Deaton smiled.  "Postcognition."

"Don't you mean precognition?"

"No, I mean postcognition, looking into the past.  It's easier because the past is fixed for us and leaves remnants of itself in our present.  Precognition is full of divergent timelines, quantum potentialities collapsing into one another, and...it's a much rarer ability to have and more difficult to master if you do.  Postcognition is a much more common ability and much easier to start with."

"Will this in any way lead me on a path to starting fires with my mind?"

*****

Forgoing his usual evening energy drink, Stiles decides to brew some Chamomile tea.  He's not sure how long it's been in the cupboard, maybe since his mom was alive, but after a few sips he decides that it is not what he needs to relax his mind.  He grabs an orange soda instead.  At least it's decaffeinated.

Stiles has been practicing the postcognition exercise every night for over a week.  Most nights he just falls asleep, though a couple of times he thinks he might have seen something, but that might have just been dreams he had.  Tonight he steals some cushions from the couch to prop himself up in bed.  He does his initial meditation, clearing his mind of all of the thoughts that cloud it: Calculus test, girls in short skirts, why Lydia goes out of her way to insult him for at least ten minutes a day if she isn't really into him, the history paper he still hasn't written, how jealous he is that Scott has Allison, why he can't stop looking when Danny is changing in the locker room...whoa!  He really needs to not be thinking about how he might be into guys as well as girls right now.  That's a rabbit hole he can fall down later.  He need to clear his mind and just let himself travel into the past.

More than once he is sure that he fell asleep, but he attempts the exercise again.  He just might not have the gift so all of this might be pointless.  Maybe he should go play some X-Box?  No, focus focus focus....but also be unfocused.  Sometimes it seemed as though these instructions were counter intuitive just to drive him crazy.  Focused, but unfocused.  Clear your mind and let yourself....

And that's when he felt it.   Like he suddenly dropped out of his body.  Falling and falling until he shook himself out of it.  That had been scary!  Scary, but maybe also a tiny bit cool.  Maybe, just maybe, he was finally getting somewhere.

It took some time to calm his thumping heart, but Stiles went over the exercise again and again until he started to feel himself slipping out of his body again.  He felt himself falling, but did what he could to remain calm.  The falling slowed until the movement seemed almost imperceptible.  He could still feel his body lying on the bed, but he could also feel it in this other place.  He opened his eyes and found himself in his room, but not his room the way it is now, the way it was...

"Stiles!" called his mother from downstairs.  "You're going to miss the bus!  Stiles if you don't start answering to 'Stiles' I'll start calling you by your birth name again!"

"I'm coming!  Gawd!" yelled his former self.  Stiles watched as his younger self picked up a dirty shirt off of the floor and pulled it on before heading downstairs with his backpack.

Stiles finds himself in the kitchen, though he doesn't remember how he got there.

"I don't want pancakes.  I want Pop-Tarts!"

"I already made pancakes."

"But I want Pop-Tarts!"

Stiles' mother abandons the already cooked breakfast and reaches into the cupboard to pull out some Pop-Tarts.

Stiles looks at his younger self with disbelief.  'I'm such a brat to her.  Why am I such a brat to her?'  This is not the way he remembers things.  Stiles wants to walk over to his mother and pull her into a tight embrace.  To tell her that she's wonderful and that he loves her with every fiber of his being.

"Hurry up or you'll miss the bus." 

"Can't you drive me?"

"That will make me late for work, plus then who will Scott sit with on the bus?"  His mother looks tired.  Is it just from putting up with him or was she already sick and just didn't know?

Stiles feels his lids getting heavy and the room losing focus.  He feels himself being pulled sideways and finds himself in a house that looks vaguely familiar.  He's been here before, but he can't put his finger on it.

"Derek!  Where are you going?"

"Out!"

"Out isn't an answer!"

He looks different, but Stiles knows that it's Derek the minute he walks into the foyer.  He's skinny and awkward with a round face and zits.  Even Stiles can tell that he dresses bad.  Derek's mother walks into the room stands in front of the door, blocking Derek's exit.

"I'm meeting someone."

"Someone?  Is this someone a girl?"

"Maybe."  Derek grins and flushes with embarrassment. 

"Do I get to meet this mystery woman?"

"No!" says Derek as he pushes past his mother to get out the door.

She laughs it off and Stiles finds himself outside on a summer's day.  A twelve year old Derek is rebuilding the porch with his father.

"But the cool kids do lacrosse!"

"No team sports Derek.  Nothing that aggressive."

"Uncle Peter played basketball!"

"And that was irresponsible of your grandfather.  If you were to slip someone could get hurt.  What about gymnastics?"

"Only girls do gymnastics Dad."

"Tennis?"

"Ug...I'd rather do gymnastics."

"Gymnastics are cool Derek.  You can learn to do flips and things."

His father gets up to retrieve more lumber.

"Dad?  Will Mom give Logan the bite?"

His father returns and sits down next to Derek.  "We're going to wait until he's an adult so he can decide for himself."

"But the bite is a gift!"

"It is son, but Logan being born human also means that he has freedoms that we don't have."

Scenes after scene swirls in front of Stiles.  This isn't the Derek he knows.  This kid is always giggling, telling bad jokes, and hugging everyone.  This is a big family full of love.  Mom, Dad, aunts, an uncle, a grandfather, and cousins.  Laura he recognizes, but the one he can't stop focusing on is Logan.  He's five, maybe six, and he follows fifteen year old Derek around everywhere, demands to sit next to Derek at the dinner table, has to show Derek every single new thing he learns.

Logan is pestering Derek at the dinner table.  "Make the face!  Make the face!"

"Logan!" barks his mother.

As if in defiance to her, Derek shifts to his were form and growls at Logan who squeals with delight.

"Derek!  Not at the dinner table!"

At times Derek finds it a bit tiring, telling Logan to go away, or sneaking out with his friends before Logan knows he's gone.

"One day," says his mother.  "He's going to stop worshipping you and you're going to realize how much you miss it."

And then he smells the smoke.

Stiles tries to pull himself out of the house, out of the vision, but he's stuck there.  He finds himself surrounded by flame, choking despite he knows he has no physical form here.  He hears the screams.  He collapses to the ground into a ball, clutching his head.  Fear, anger, and sorrow overwhelm him.  He can feel what they are feeling, all of them, all at once.  It collects in him and then explodes outward.

He is alone.  It's night and it's cold.  He is crouched on the floor of the burnt Hale house.  Everything is silent.  He stands and wonders where the visions will take him next.  Moments pass and he finally realizes that he is actually standing barefoot in just a t-shirt and sweatpants inside the old Hale house.

He's already up the driveway and some way down the road before he wonders if he should have checked to see if Derek left any shoes or a coat at the house when he moved out.  Stiles has jammed many rocks and branches into the soles of his tender feet.  He decides he'd rather soldier on than go back, trying to use each painful step to tell himself how tough he is when he really wishes he had someone to cry to.

He sees the blue and red lights come up behind him before he hears the patrol car that pulls up beside him.

"Hey Stiles.  What ya doin'?"

"Hey Forester, I was sleepwalking and now I'm feeling like an idiot."

"Your dad has us looking for you.  Front door open, shoes, coat, and cell phone still in your room.  He might have thought kidnapping, but...ya know...it's you."

"Yup, it's me."

The deputy radios in that he's found Stiles and drops him off at home to his waiting father who pulls him into a hug.  He gets worried when Stiles won't let go and keeps repeating "I love you".  Stiles insists that he was just sleepwalking, but who sleepwalks ten miles?

Stiles isn't sure how to proceed with what he had learned.  He wasn't even ready to talk to Deaton.  Scott knows something is wrong over the next couple of days because he's quiet and "you're never quiet".  He can't stop thinking about the Derek he knows now and the kid Derek was.  A kid a lot like him, but with way more to lose.

Stiles doesn't complain when Scott and Isaac decide to do wolfy things after practice.  Instead he texts Derek:

<Can I come over?>

<Why?>

<I want to talk to you.>

It was several minutes before he received a reply.

<Fine.>

Despite knowing he's coming, Derek takes a long time to answer the door.  He wordlessly steps aside to let Stiles in.  Once he closes the door, Derek crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows expectantly.  Stiles isn't really surprised by this wordless behavior, but it makes what he's trying to do harder.

"When my mom got sick...I really didn't know what to do or even really how to understand what was going on.  Instead of helping, I became even more of a brat."

"What is this about?"

"When she died my world collapsed...imploded.  My life was mom, dad, and Scott and then my mom was gone.  I didn't know how to make sense of the world anymore.  If I even thought about something happening to my dad or Scott I would have a panic attack.  My dad's a cop...so it happened a lot."

Stiles took a step toward Derek and Derek instinctively took a step back.

"I'm not saying I know what your life is like Derek or what you went through, but I've lost family.  I've had my world come apart."

Stiles has continued to advance toward Derek who has backed himself into the wall.  The role reversal is not lost on Stiles who is only a foot away from him now.  Derek's eyes are full of hurt and more than a little fear, but he doesn't look away.

"Get out of here Stiles."

"No.  You need to understand that there are people that care about you.  People who you are important to and not just because you're their Alpha and you keep them safe."

Derek looks away now, trying to hide from Stiles' penetrating gaze.

"I'm going to hug you now Derek and you're going to let me."

"Don't."

Stiles steps forward and puts his arms around Derek pulling him close.  Derek is stiff, but does not fight him.  Derek's muscles start to relax and his shoulders droop, he turns his head forward and Stiles can feel the whiskers of his stubble on his cheek.  His arms relax around Stiles, who thinks he can just barely feel Derek hugging him back.

It's a good start.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek is injured and Stiles coming to the rescue causes a shift in their relationship. Are they poking a toe outside the friend zone?

Stiles had only been at the archery range for a half an hour when his shoulder and back started to ache, but he felt he needed to practice for two hours to make the trip and his lane fee worth it.  He also knew he should be hitting the gym to strengthen those muscles, but it's so much easier to study herb books in his bedroom surrounded by snacks than go all the way to the school gym to lift some weights.

Everyone had recovered their arrows, the range was cleared, and the range supervisor had turned off the flashing red light.  Stiles lined up his next shot, trying to get his bow arm into the right position and pull the string back correctly.

"Stiles?"

He was startled and fired the arrow somewhere in the area of the target in the next lane.

"Allison?"

He looked at her apprehensively and took an involuntary step back.  Her eyes told him that she definitely took notice.

"You're taking up archery?"

Stiles smiled and tried to play off his skittishness around her.  "Yeah, well I figured I should get some kind of weapon skill and my dad won't let me touch guns."

"How's it going?"

"When I'm not being spooked I can pretty consistently hit a target the size of a human head at ten yards so I figure if I ever have to face off against some zombies I can at least get in a decent head shot before they chomp me.  A few more lessons and I'll be doing alright."

Allison smiles.  "You know you could have asked me to teach you."

Stiles' face pulled into a strained grin.  "No offense Allison, but having been beaten and tortured by your dad and grandfather, having your mom try to kill Scott, your Aunt killing Derek's entire family, and you shooting and torturing Boyd and Erica...oh wait!  I forgot about you shooting and stabbing Isaac.  You and your psychotic family are not exactly people I feel safe around."

Allison looked like she'd been punched in the gut, but Stiles didn't feel the least bit sorry.  The Argents are killers and he didn't want them near the people he loves.  She looked as though she wanted to apologize, but the words don't come.  What could she say?  _Sorry_ didn't really cover the things she had done.

"I..." Her voice broke.  She inhaled deeply, but did not try to make eye contact.  "I was going to tell Scott, but since you're here...I have some cousins coming into town.  Hunters.  My father says they are really bad news.  You should warn the packs."

Stiles didn't think this maked up for her past transgressions, but as she turned to walk away he said "Thanks Allison."

The Argent cousins were dangerous and aggressive and act as if they've never even heard of the hunters' code.  In fact they left a trail of destruction in their wake that included plenty of human casualties and a couple of deaths.  Derek wanted to gather together in a fortified position and wait for the Argents to attack them on their territory, but Scott insisted on taking the offensive in order to minimize civilian casualties.

Three days later Stiles has shoved Derek up into the hollow of a log as far as he can.  He stepped away and when he was sure that Derek's body wasn't visible he raced off to try to lead the Argent cousins away.  One stolen and burning car later, Stiles made his way back through the forest.  He left text after text for Scott, but got no answer.  He pulled Derek out of the hollow and examined his body.  Things don't look good.  Three wolfsbane bullets, one in each of his arm, leg, and chest.  Stiles slapped Derek across the face to wake him up, but it barely registered.  He was going to have to do something about those bullets.

He pulled at the bullet hole in Derek's shirt over his chest wound and ripped it open.  One look at the wound and he knew it was the one that was killing Derek.  He also knew it was the bullet that was meant for him before Derek threw himself in front of it.  Stiles could not mess this up.

Stiles pulled out his pocket knife, inhaled deeply, and prayed to anything listening that Scott will answer his messages soon.  He dug his knife into the wound, shocking Derek awake so that he grabbed Stile's shoulder with his good hand so hard he feared it might break.

"Derek I need you to calm down.  I'm trying to get the bullet out.  Do you understand me?"

Derek's eyes were panic and pain.

"It's a wolfsbane bullet Derek.  I've got to cut it out okay?"

Derek's eyes were wild with fear and anger, but somewhere inside his pain crazed mind he understood Stiles, trusting the boy would do him no real harm.  He relaxed his grip on Stiles' shoulder.

"I'm going to start digging again.  I need you to not break my shoulder."

Derek dropped his hand to the ground, grasping around until he found the root of a nearby tree and clutched it with all his remaining strength.

Stiles hoped that Derek can keep it together long enough for him to finish what he needs to do.  Digging into Derek's chest was more terrifying that he thought it would be.  He wished he could have started with a leg or an arm, but he knew this was his first priority if Derek was going to survive this.  With the Wolfsbane in his body, Derek wouldn't heal if Stiles cut a major artery.  He swore to any powers listening that he'd take an anatomy class next year as long as Derek lived through this.  Carefully he worked at it, loosening the hole just enough that he can work the bullet to the surface and get it free.

He was swifter and less careful with the other two bullets.  Derek won't die if he cuts a little extra muscle or tendon in his limbs.  He can see the black tendrils of the poison had worked its way into Derek's body.  In his pack he keeps four common types of wolfsbane, he pulled them out and burned them, then took the ashes and ground them into Derek's chest wound.  It seemed to have some impact, but it wasn't curing him completely.  He tried grinding more in, but it has no effect.

He called Deaton, but there was no answer.  He called Scott and got his voicemail.

"Scott, I really need you to come get me.  Argents ambushed us.  Derek's been shot in the chest and I don't have the right kind of Wolfsbane with me.  He's dying right now.  Don't be screwing around."

Stiles decided that texting the same message with his GPS coordinates might work better, but he wasn't going to wait for a response.  Derek is too heavy for him to carry to the jeep and dragging him slowly across the forest would just leave them vulnerable to attack.  Scott could take forever and he needed to get the poison out.  Stiles told himself that if he though about it too much, he wouldn't be able to do it.

Stiles put his mouth over Derek's chest wound and began to suck on it.  His mouth filled with the salty sweet taste of blood as well as something acrid.  He spit it out and then went back to suck more out. Stiles hoped that was the Wolfsbane he was tasting and not just whatever werewolf puss Derek's body was trying to fight off the toxin with.

"Wha 'er doon?" mumbled Derek.

"I'm trying to save your life," Stiles said between mouthfuls.

"s'poison's ta humans too."

"I'll worry about that later."  Stiles shined his flashlight at Derek's chest wound.  It seemed to help, because he was sure it had seemed worse.  He pulled a couple more mouthfuls out of Derek until he couldn't taste the acrid substance anymore.  He repeated the procedure with the arm and leg wounds.  He then used what water he had to rinse his mouth saving a few swallows to give to Derek who seemed feverish and pale.

Stiles pulled off his red hoodie and shirt, the cold nipping at his bare skin.  With his pocket knife he cut his t-shirt into strips and used the lengths to bandage Derek's wounds.  Once he was sure that would be enough he put his red hoodie back on and zipped it up.  He repacked his bag and pulled Derek back towards the hollow of the log for better cover.  Derek was starting to tremble.

Stiles took the hoodie off and pulled it onto Derek, but it wasn't enough.  He gathered some dry leaves and covered as much of Derek as he could with them and then he lay down next to Derek and put his arms around him.

"Stiles?"

"You're in shock, possibly hypothermia, I'm trying to keep you warm."

Lying there in the forest holding him, Stiles was struck by how small Derek seemed.  Normally Derek seems so large, but in that moment Stiles felt that he could envelope Derek completely in his arms and he surprised himself by how much he likes that idea.  So much of Derek the big bad werewolf is in the persona he projects, the strong independent loner, but Derek probably aches to be held as bad as Stiles does.  Would Derek want for them to be that for each other?  Would he?

"Glad it's you Stiles."

Derek put his hand up on Stiles' arm and gave it a tug, as if to pull Stiles' embrace tighter.  He wished he could ask for a bit more clarification from Derek, but he's also glad that he shared this moment with him.  When Scott finally called back he was filled with relief, but also a little sadness that the moment ended.

Scott arrived with Isaac and they moved Derek into the front seat of Scott's mom's car.  Isaac and Scott looked at Stiles naked torso a little strangely, but then Scott took off his coat and handed it to Stiles when he climbed in back with Isaac.  Once they got to the veterinary clinic Stiles started giving them orders on how to prep Derek while he gathered and burned the types of Wolfsbane he hasn't already tried.  Scott naturally followed along with what Stiles said, but Stiles felt Isaac watching him.  He finally came across the one that neutralized the poison and allowed Derek to heal.  Once Derek woke and was talking, Stiles decided to step outside and get some air.  He needed to clear his mind of everything that happened that day.

Isaac followed him out.  It's a few moments before he said anything.  "You were really impressive in there.  Like a general or...I guess a surgeon."

"Uh...thanks."

"I don't know if we're two packs or one big screwy pack.  Just when I think I've got it all figured out you come along and do something like that.  You and Scott have been doing this longer than me.  Sometimes I think you're more a part of this than me, even though you're not a wolf."

Stiles turned to face the young wolf.

"It's like both you and Scott are the leaders of your pack, but then Derek listens to you too. You and Derek fight all the time, but he trusts your decisions more than he trusts mine.  It's like you're second in command of his pack too.  I dunno, maybe the only ones that aren't part of both packs are Derek and Scott."

Stiles wasn't exactly sure what to make of Isaac's jumble, but he appreciated the sentiment.

"So anyway, Derek said I have to drive you to the hospital now because you have Wolfsbane poisoning?"

"I'm fine.  If I had Wolfsbane poisoning I'd be feeling it by now.  Derek doesn't need to worry about me."

Isaac looked like he was about to protest, but then he just shrugged his shoulders and went back inside.  Stiles tried to enjoy the stillness of the night while waiting for the inevitable disruption.  Derek didn't make him wait long.

"You need to go to the hospital.  They have antitoxins they can give you."

"I'm feeling fine and if I wasn't I have some antitoxins of my own."

"Why don't you listen to me!?!"  He wasn't entirely surprised by Derek's yelling.

"Derek, stop."  Stiles walked toward him until they were only a few feet apart.  "Is my heart rate accelerated?  Is my breathing?  Are my pupils dilated?  Can you smell Aconite in my sweat?"

Derek shifted his eyes to the ground.  Moments passed before he replied. "No."

"Derek, I think I know why you're being like this with me.  We've been comrades in arms for a while now and I'd like to think that we've also started become friends, but tonight...and this isn't easy for me...but I think I felt something between us tonight that might be more than that.  And I think that you felt something too."

Stiles took a few steps until he was inches from Derek.  "And if I felt something and you felt something, then maybe there's something to be felt."

Despite their proximity Derek looked away, refused to meet his gaze.  "You're wrong."

"The thing is, when you say I'm wrong, it usually means I'm right.  Because when you really think I'm wrong you usually just shove me out of the way."

Derek brushed past him and headed for the door.  "You're wrong."

Stiles watched the door clatter shut behind Derek.

"You still didn't shove me."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost worried that their relationship is moving too quickly to be realistic. You'll have to let me know.
> 
> (In the next chapter Stiles' world will change forever...)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A major event transforms Stiles and he'll never be the same again.

Derek stood in his full Alpha form over Vesta.  He reached down and picked her up by the neck.  She barely had the strength to make a futile attempt at preventing her own choking by pulling at his grasp.  The werewolf snarled and drew back a clawed hand to strike.

"Derek wait!"

Derek turned to Stiles, who now seemed puny, and growled, "She nearly killed us.  She nearly killed you."

"She's beaten Derek.  She only tried to harm us when we came between her and the box.  The box is destroyed, she no longer has any reason to harm us."

Derek looked at mage, body and spirit broken.  Isaac and Scott laid nearby, broken, but mending.  The wolf in him wanted to tear her apart.  The man heard Stiles' words.

"You don't need to do this.  You don't need to become that guy.  You don't want to become that guy."  Stiles put his hand on Derek's arm.

The beast's shoulders dropped and the rigidness left his body.  He released Vesta and she dropped to the ground.  His body began to deflate, hair receded, and features became more human and less beast.  Scott didn't know if he was more astonished to have finally seen Derek's Alpha form or that Derek listened to Stiles with almost no argument.

"I hope we don't regret this Stiles."

Stiles wouldn't even look at Derek.  He just used the last of his strength to take off his red hoodie and hand it to Derek.

"Dude...you know you're naked right?"

A week passed and now Stiles only noticed his bruised ribs during practice or when he rolled the wrong way while sleeping.  He fell asleep playing X-Box, but was awakened by a voice calling his name.  He opened an eye and he saw a robed figure, backlit by the summer evening sun.  She called his name again before he realized who it was and nearly jumped out of his skin clamoring to get as far as he can from her on the couch.

"Vesta!"

"Don't fear Stiles.  The universe requires balance.  I'm here to give you something."

She held what looks like a hunk of glass, but shaped more like a stone.  He couldn't help but be transfixed by it.  When Stiles took it from her it seems cold at first, but then warms in his hand.

"When I looked through your memories to find the Box of Oderion I saw a need in you.  I don't like being in someone's debt."

He was aware of her, but the focus of his attention was on the stone.  He didn't notice the darkness enclosing around him until it was too late.

When he woke he was in a small room on an uncomfortable bed of straw.  Stone walls with a paper window to let light in.

"That bitch!  What did she do to me?"

Stiles heard a bell being rung.  His hands looked different and his body felt different.  How long was he out for?  He tried the door and it was unlocked.  Asian men wearing robes with shaved heads walked past him, a few nodding in acknowledgement.  Stiles made his way down the hallway until he found his way outside.  He was in some sort of large castle or temple complex.  No one seemed to be stopping his movement so he tried to find his way outside.  He didn't see a drop of technology in what he was assuming was a monastery, someone outside probably had a cell phone, they were ubiquitous all over the world, even in the backwoods of wherever he is.

He make his way out the front gate and onto the road that lead away from the monastery.  There are vendors out front, but none of them are wearing modern clothing.  Not a single t-shirt to be had.  It didn't seem right, he'd seen National Geographic and he knew Western clothes had invaded pretty much anywhere.  People looked at him like they've never seen someone like him before.  He tried to walk down the road, but found that he couldn't.  No matter how much he willed himself forward his body just wouldn't move.  Something was keeping him there: Magic.

Since the monastery seemed to be the center of everything he decided to head back that way.  Passing through the sparse group he seemed to hear an English word slipped into their conversations here and there.  As he walked past a pool of water something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.  He looked over and saw a Caucasian face looking back at him, but it is not his own.  It was another young man, maybe 18 or 19 years old.  He touched his face and watched the reflection to make sure that this was the face he was wearing.

It did not feel like a dream.  Time moved very normally.  It felt very real.  He wondered if it was some kind of simulation, like virtual reality, but with magic.  Since walking out of it didn't seem to work, he wondered if the best path wasn't to just play along and then see if there was a way to terminate or escape it.

"Moreau?  Time for morning meditation."

Stiles looked over at the small man standing next to him.  He then realized that it's not that he's been hearing English words scattered into people's speech, it's that he'd been hearing Chinese words that he understood.  He nodded and followed the man to morning meditation.  He was with the initiates.  He spent the day learning to meditate, practicing martial arts, and if he wasn't mistaken...learning magic.  Despite his exhaustion, when everyone went to bed he explored the monastery to see if there is some exit or way to terminate the magical simulation.  The thought crossed his mind that he might have actually been in the body of another person, but was that crazier than Vesta putting him into some kind of realistic dream?

The next day he does more of the same.  He continued to investigate to try to find a way out, but he found himself drawn to the idea of just going along with what was happening.  He was definitely in the past, hundreds of years ago.  By the end of the week he no longer desired to leave.  Days are long and hard, but rewarding.  When he stopped fighting it, memories start to come to him.  Knowledge of the fundamentals of magic which were expanded by the teachings at the monastery.

He was there for nearly a month when he met Mei Ling, the priestess of a neighboring temple.  Their attraction to each other is immediate and they soon became lovers.  During the day his tutors taught him about the magic to control energy and how to focus his mind.  At night she taught him the tantra and how to control life magic.  He learned to see the strings that connect all beings and make up who they were.  Their nights were filled with passions Stiles never thought possible, experiences that cannot be articulated with words.  Before he realized it days became months became years.  After four years his time at the temple came to an end.  He learned all they could teach him, only practice could sharpen his skills.  He and Mei Ling still loved each other, but they are different people and they knew their time together had come to an end.  Their parting is not bitter.

When he arrived in Venice to study with the hermetic mage Nostromo, his mentor did not give too much stock to his Eastern studies, but Stiles proved him wrong by rapidly mastering the mentor's rudimentary skills.  Similar ideas, just a different paradigm for accessing and harnessing the power.  He learned the disciplines of controlling water, air, and the minds of men and beasts.  Nearing his first anniversary in Italy, he's a guest at the home of a wealthy merchant when his eyes fell upon the evening's performer, a musician with dark brooding eyes by the name of Gianni.  The timid, shy young man unknowingly tapped into the music of the universe with his songs.  It was a gentle magic all his own.  Stiles could see all of the strings of pain and sorrow and fear within the boy and couldn't help but reach out to him.  They became lovers within the week.

Despite Gianni being two years older than Stiles, he seems very much the younger partner, far less worldly and sure of himself.  The old hermetic was a difficult master to work with, but Stiles had never been happier once he and Gianni share their lives.  He and Mei Ling were always two very separate individuals, but he and Gianni had a synergy, together they were more than the sum of their parts.  Gianni blossomed under Stiles' nurturing and soon he is the most lauded musician in all of Venice.  He was no longer the timid wounded young man under his father's heel, but was elegant and vivacious, invited to every party of note.

Gianni's father sent five men to kill Stiles, all formidable with a blade, but they had no idea who he was.  He hardly needed a trace of magic to dispatch them.  Stiles wasn't sure if it was vengeance for freeing Gianni from him, or if the rumors of their relationship had finally gotten back to him and he was attempting to prevent any further besmirching of his family name.  Gianni was enraged when he learned of the attack, finally confronting his abusive father and his lifetime of actions.  He does not cut his father off financially. Fearing for his mother's well being he still sent them more than he ever made for him when he was under his father's control.  Stiles thought that the old man should be thanking him for the boost in income, but he understood that this was not about money, but control.

After four years Stiles had mastered all that the old hermetic mage could teach him and he left for Prague with Gianni in tow to study with the Alchemist Bakst.  From him he learned the manipulation of earth and how to read the strands of time.  Prague was the Paris of Eastern Europe and Gianni soon became favored among merchants and royals.  Stiles love for him grew more than he thought was ever possible.  Every night he got more from pleasuring Gianni's body than he did from his own.  He dreamed of creating a magic so powerful that he could create a child from their joined flesh.

"I will love you all my life," says Gianni one moonlit evening.

"I will love you for all time," Stiles tells him.

They were in Prague for two years when Gianni received a letter that his father is ailing.  He must return to Venice to put the family's affairs in order as head of the household.  Stiles created a stone and filled it with his love so that all Gianni had to do was grasp it and he would feel Stiles' love for him.  When Stiles felt the strands between them tense, he assumed it was because Gianni was dealing with his family.  When the letter arrived telling him that Gianni had contracted a pox he rushed back to Venice as fast as he could, but Gianni is already in the ground when he arrived.  He cursed himself for not yet mastering the ability to read timelines and seeing this coming.  They told him that Gianni clutched the stone on his deathbed and begged to be buried with it.  Stiles could barely hear them for he had become a shadow of his former self.  A ghost walking out into the streets of Europe.

Stiles woke sobbing.  He found himself in a bright room.  His body felt weak, unwell, and there were tubes coming out of his body.  Or were the going in?  Noisy machines are next to him.  There were lamps in the ceiling, but these were not oil lamps, they were electric.  Stiles felt very disoriented.  He had been transported back to his old time.  Everything overwhelmed him and none of it seemed real.  He couldn't get comfortable with the tubes and tried to pull the one out of his nose, but his body was just too weak.  He still aches for the loss of Gianni.  His love was lost to him.

Angrily he pulled the energy from the objects in the room and released it out of himself in a burst, trying to rage against everything around him.  The devices around him exploded, arcing electricity and catching fire.  Everything was pain and he nearly collapsed from exhaustion.  This body was not used to wielding such power and electricity was new to him, they did not have it in his time.  The explosions attracted a nurse who yelled "Melissa!  Melissa!" upon seeing that he was awake.  A familiar face rushed into the room and called out his name.  A name he hadn't heard in years.

"Stiles!"

"Melissa?"

"We're not really on a first name basis, but since you just came out of a coma I'm going to overlook it."  She began flashing lights in his eyes and checking his pulse.

"Sorry...Mrs. McCall."

"I need to text your father right now and let him know you're awake."  She pulled a phone out of her pocket and quickly started keying into it.

Phone.  Technology.  The magic of the modern era.

She tried to prevent him from yanking the tubes out of himself, but when the other nurse started blasting the burning equipment with a fire extinguisher she looked at him with resign.

"Maybe we can do without those."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me weeks to write and was really more abandoned than perfected. It really accelerates the story and takes it to a new place. Hope it's not too jarring. 
> 
> I'm back in the US for a couple of weeks and being here is apparently more distracting than traveling. I'm hoping to be able to keep up the pace of putting out a chapter a week in addition to the other fics I'm writing, but I have lots of film and art projects happening as well.
> 
> Thanks for all the feedback!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is back, but everything's different.

Ten days.  He was in a coma for ten days while he experienced ten years of another man's life.  Magic was like that.  It liked symbolic exchanges.

It was Scott's turn to fuss over him.  He and the Sheriff had obviously made some sort of secret pact that they wouldn't leave Stiles alone.  Despite the fact that he'd explained the magical "coma" to Scott once they got a moment alone, he could see how tight Scott's emotions were pulling on the threads that connected them.  This is the closest that Scott had gotten to losing someone he cared about and it obviously had terrified him.

This body had absolutely no capacity for mind magic or Stiles would have read Scott's mind to see exactly what was going on with him.  He also would have influenced the doctor to release him sooner.  He was going mad sitting in a hospital bed for three days.  He actually looked forward to physical therapy everyone else seemed to dread because it allowed him to use his body.  Despite his father's unease of having a family member in that hospital, he knew his father felt safer having him there.  Balancing his father's emotional well being against his own sanity was becoming an increasingly difficult rope to walk.

Stiles absent mindedly brushed the bandage at the back of his neck with his fingers as he looked over at the embarrassing get well banner students at the high school had made him.  Four mysterious puncture wounds that showed up on his neck _after_ he'd arrived in the hospital.  If he wasn't being watched so closely by doctors and nurses he would have used a little healing magic to have that gone in hours.  Neither Scott nor Isaac would have tried to tap into his mind so he knew who the claw marks were from.

Isaac was coming by for a couple hours a day.  They rarely spoke.  Isaac just came around to sit by Stiles.  Stiles saw the threads of comfort between himself and Isaac.  Stiles hadn't realized before that Isaac felt he was an emotional anchor.  He always assumed that Isaac was only around him because of Scott.  He also saw the strands of romantic love that pulled Isaac toward Scott and saw how Scott did not reciprocate.  Of course not...Scott would be so blinded by his feelings for Allison to see that Isaac's love was more than friendship.  Maybe Isaac hid it well from Scott, but the longing he saw in his eyes when the three of them were together made him doubt that.

More than anything Stiles wanted time alone.  Despite knowing that the last ten years had been a projection, a magical simulation...it was this life that now seemed strange and foreign to him.  He needed time to sort things out and he needed time to mourn Gianni.  He needed to figure out who he was now that he was back in his own life after a ten year absence.

The next day he finally convinced his father and his doctor that he would recuperate much better at home and got himself released.  Scott was there for the drive home and Isaac showed up at the house not long after.  Apparently they were having a sleepover.  His father was cooking barbeque and Lord of the Rings was in the Blu-Ray player.  His father was even cooking himself veggie burgers without being prompted.  He knew this was a big gesture on their part so he tried to be gracious and acted as though he was enjoying it.  While they watched the first movie he looked at the strands connecting Isaac and Scott.  There was a lot of intimacy there he wasn't expecting, perhaps that was part of the pack bond.  Moreau hadn't been intimately familiar with werewolves so this was the first time Stiles had seen them with his new abilities.  It might explain why Isaac was falling in love with Scott.

He nearly made it through the second movie when he decided that his best tactic to get some time alone was to tell them he was tired and wanted to head for bed.  He made sure to give his father a good long hug, using some life magic to give him a little endorphin boost while he was at it.  He didn't want his father to worry anymore, he wanted him to feel safe letting Stiles be Stiles again.  He had hoped that Scott and Isaac would stay up and continue to watch the films, but they shut it off and followed him up the stairs and into his room.  It seemed he was going to have to wait a bit longer to get himself some more privacy.

Stiles woke himself at first light.  Scott had given the trundle bed he usually slept in to Isaac and had spent the night on the floor.  Stiles got up silently and pulled enough life energy out of both of them to hopefully keep them from waking for a couple of hours.  More than he would have from them were they human, because as werewolves they generated a surplus.  He went to his father's room and took just a bit from him to keep him sleeping soundly.  Then he made his way outside.

Stiles decided to go jogging in the woods.  He wanted the exercise, but he also wanted the solitude and fresh air.  Moreau's body had been physically strong and also accustomed to wielding the forces of magic.  Stiles' body was not unathletic, but it was also not the body of a trained martial artist and mage.  It would take him a lot of time to train this body to be the way he wanted it.  Time until he felt comfortable in his old skin.

He was jogging for half an hour when Derek made his presence known.  Stiles stopped when they were twenty feet apart, not ready to close the gap.  He was wondering when Derek would pop up.  What he wasn't expecting was what he felt when he saw Derek:  He had Gianni's eyes.

"You seem to be feeling better."

"I was always feeling fine.  I was in a magical trance, not a physical coma.  I'm assuming the claw marks in the back of neck were from you?"

Derek furrowed his brow.  "I tried to see what was happening to you, but I'm not good at it.  I just got a jumble of images."

"I was experiencing a year in a day, I'm sure it was going by too fast for anyone."

Derek just nodded in agreement, but the scowl on his face and the darkening of his aura said he was still taking this as a personal failure.  Stiles wanted to reach out and comfort him.  This is something that even old Stiles might have done when they were alone, but it didn't feel right at the moment.

"It wasn't a curse Derek, it was a gift.  It's just taking me time to adjust to it."

"Isaac told me.  Scott and your dad are worried about you because you don't act the same.  You're not joking and laughing.  That's the Stiles we know."

Derek didn't speak much, but when he did he was rarely one to avoid uncomfortable truths.  Unless they involved his _own_ feelings.  He hadn't been acting like the old Stiles because he no longer was the old Stiles.  That's why his father wouldn't let Stiles be Stiles, he wasn't acting the way they knew him.  They must be assuming it was the result of the "coma".  He knew he was going to have to change that.  To try acting like his younger self in front of Scott and his father, maybe in front of everyone.

"You smell a bit different.  Older, more confident."

"I'm ten years older Derek, even if my body isn't."

He wished he could read Derek's mind.  The threads connecting them were tangled and knotted, but he saw enough to know some of the feelings that were twisted up in there.  He also couldn't deny that strands of his that led toward Derek were not all platonic.  He knew these were not new strands, these were feelings he didn't fully acknowledge before.  He had been falling in love with Derek before he spent ten years in someone else's life, he just didn't have the experience to see it.

"Hey Derek?  It's good to see you."

Stiles got back to the house and made sure no one was awake.  He looked at the two slumbering young men in his room, Isaac curled into a ball and Scott's body splayed out, mouth wide open and drooling on his pillow.  He thought _Two dangerous werewolves are in my house, please save me Argents!_   It brought a smile to his face and for a moment he felt like his old self.  He took a shower to hide the smell of his exercise and went down to the kitchen to start making breakfast for them all.  When he was ready for them to come down he started brewing the coffee, knowing the smell would rouse both his father and the wolf boys in his bedroom.

His father decided that he didn't want Stiles driving for a while and so took his keys away from him.  Stiles tries to convince him that he was being unnecessarily overprotective, but the sheriff wasn't going to budge on this one.  It took a lot of effort for Stiles to convince him that he could be left alone without he or Scott hovering. 

He decided to take Scott out into the woods with him to practice his fighting.  At first Scott wouldn't come at him with any kind of force, so Stiles made a point to thrash him a bit until Scott got the idea beaten into his head that Stiles could indeed fight now.  His body wasn't trained yet, but it would eventually get there.  He easily healed himself the times that Scott did get through his defenses.  Sometimes Isaac joined them, wanting Stiles to teach him some moves.  It made Isaac an interesting opponent because his fighting style began to develop into a hybrid of what he'd learned from Derek, Scott, and Stiles.  Isaac began to come by the house nearly every day as had at the hospital, not needing anything other than to share a room with Stiles, and he seemed perfectly content to not talk while Stiles spent hours meditating.

Once his father no longer felt the need to swing by the house every couple of hours to check on him, Stiles decided it was time for him to make a clandestine trip to UC Berkeley.  Scott seemed like the obvious choice, but he usually had difficulty getting access to his mother's car and Stiles didn't want to expend the extra energy to keep him entertained on the trip.  He looked for Derek's number in his phone, smiling to himself when he remembered that he had him listed as 'Sourwolf'.  When Stiles asked Derek to drive him the three hours to Berkeley, he agreed without negotiation or complaint.

Derek picked him up on Saturday right after his father left in the morning and they did the entire trip mostly in silence.  It was nice to not to have to talk, but just sit and enjoy each other's company.  Derek seemed to understand and appreciate the more quiet, contemplative person Stiles had become.  Stiles occasionally allowed his eyes to wander over Derek and appreciate how beautiful the man was.  He wondered how Derek would feel about being thought of as beautiful.  Thinking about being close to Derek filled his chest with warmth.  He wanted to reach out and put his hand on Derek somewhere, just to have a physical connection between them.  He was certain that Derek would not feel comfortable with the intimacy, no matter how much he might also want it.

Once at Berkeley's folklore library, Derek helped him photocopy the information from books that he couldn't access online.  He searched for anything he can on the Magician Moreau.  He found a song by Gianni in a book and it choked him up a bit.  Derek noticed, but said nothing.  There was little there, but any further details Stiles could find about him helped him feel complete.  Once Stiles was satisfied that nothing else could be found, they got back in the car and headed to Beacon Hills.  He fielded repeated texts from his father as to his location and well being.  Stiles tried to pay for gasoline and food, but Derek wouldn't allow it.  It felt like a strange sort of date.

That night Stiles dreamed of someone that was shifted between being Derek and Gianni and who slipped through his fingertips like smoke every time he tried to grasp him.

After a month, his father let him have his jeep keys back, though he still hovered over his son.  Stiles tried to be as sarcastic as possible, cracking jokes when he could, though he was a little out of practice.  He practiced his magic whenever he could, helping his body grow accustomed to storing and manipulating mystical energies.  At night most of his mind sleeps, but a small part of it is in a trance searching for answers.  He was searching through the streams of time to try and find his target.  Finally he was awakened early one morning by his mind finding the converging of timelines into a definite event: Vesta would be in New York City that night.

He quickly got to his computer and found a flight leaving in less than four hours.  It would take three to get to the airport so he'd barely make it.  He entered his father's credit card number, which he'd already stolen for just such an event, and printed out his boarding pass.  A five minute shower and he was out the door before dawn broke over the day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less action this chapter, but it will pick up again soon I promise.
> 
> I'm going to try and keep posting a chapter a week, but I'm going to be traveling around Europe and logistics might keep me from having a lot of time to write.


	5. Chapter 5

The plane touched down at John F. Kennedy airport.  Stiles did a little sleeping and meditating on the flight, but mostly he thought about the meeting ahead of him.

As he was disembarking the plane a touch of foresight told him that there were people waiting for him at the gate.  From the strained threads he felt from his father he assumed that he'd figured out about the plane flight and had called ahead to the NYPD.  He'd really hoped that his father wouldn't have discovered he was gone until tonight and wouldn't have discovered where he'd gone until much later.  His father must have some tag on his credit card that notified him of large purchases.  He paused for a moment pretending to tie his shoe while he contemplated his strategy.  If this body, his body, only had the capacity for mind magic he could have created a glamour and passed by undetected.  Mind magic made so many things easier! 

He pulled off his red hoodie and stuffed it into his backpack.  He pulled at the pigments of it just a bit to change them from red to black.  He then pulled it out and put it back on again, making certain to cover his hair.  He pulled at the pigments of his hair to change them to black as well.  Then came the hard part, he covered his face with his hands and pulled at the bones in his face reshaping them.  The pain was excruciating and he gritted his teeth to avoid crying out.  He had no surplus of life energy so there was none to spare to dull his pain.  Once he was done he stood up, feeling a bit light headed.  Having nothing stored, he'd had to use his own life energy to alter his face.

The two plain clothes cops were there at the terminal searching the faces in the crowd.  Stiles made a point to not avoid them to avoid looking suspicious.  Once he was out in the airport he turned on his phone to find 67 messages.  Most were from his father, but some were from Scott and a couple from Derek.  He didn't want to leave the phone on long enough to be tracked so he skipped reading the messages and just typed a message to his father before shutting off the phone:

<I'm fine.  Please call off the dogs.  Try not to worry.  Back tomorrow.  Love you.>

On the subway into Manhattan Stiles brushed past other passengers as he walked down the length of the train, bleeding away their anger and anxiety and using it to restore his own depleted life energy.  Once restored he found a place to sit and dulled the pain in his face as it slowly returned to its original shape.  By the time he got to Times Square his hoodie had almost completely faded to red and the reflection of his face in the subway window was nearly his own.  The clocks on the wall of the Port Authority told him that it would be four hours before Vesta would be where he expected her to be so he decided to walk around and see the sights.

Times Square sort of depressed him.  Aside from the Broadway shows, it was like any outdoor mall in California.  When he realized he was hungry he found himself in front of the Hard Rock Cafe.  The rest of Times Square was full of mall food so it seemed as good a choice as any.  He was seated in the section of a blue haired waitress who seemed to be speaking different languages to the different customers she served.  When she got to him he decided to try his Mandarin on her before he realized that her Chinese was rough and his was from a 400 year old dialect.  He switched to French which she seemed fluent in and his 400 year old speech patterns didn't get too much in the way. 

They shared enough language to make corny jokes which both of them seemed to be the master of in any language.  When he was done with his burger and coffee, she brought him a free dessert. Staring out the watching people rush by Stiles relaxed his mind and felt the threads that connected him to his friends and family.  His father and Scott's were unsurprisingly tight and anxious, but the ones connecting himself to Derek were more frantic than what he was expecting.  He wasn't sure why Derek would be reacting in this way, but if he wasn't mistaken Derek was rapidly coming closer to him.

"What's the matter?" asked the waitress.  "Girl problems...?  Boy problems?"

Stiles gave her a little smile.  "This time it's boy problems."

She put her hand on his shoulder.  "The upside to being bisexual is that you double your dating pool, the downside is that you have to learn to navigate two entirely different kinds of drama."

When he felt it was time to move on, Stiles thanked the waitress, tipped her well, and made his way up Broadway before cutting over to 5th avenue once he reached Central Park.  He then walked up 5th along the park until he got up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Taking the subway would have been much quicker, but this way he got to see the city a bit and he was in no hurry.  He knew when and where he and Vesta's paths would cross.  He looked around a bit, but soon found a bench in front of some Byzantine artifacts and sat down to wait.  Meditating seemed a good way to pass the time.

"Hello Stiles."

Stiles opened his eyes and smiled at her.  "Hello Vesta."

She was not wearing the robes he always associated her with.  Instead she wore a simple elegant skirt suit,  wool coat, gloves, and a hat.  She reminded him of someone from another era and perhaps she was.  Her face had always struck him as someone who was around thirty, but a master of life magic could make herself appear any age.  Her movement and posture told him that she was much older.

"I see the stone seems to have treated you well."

"It did.  Thank you."

"I was a little surprised when I felt your presence here, though I knew our paths would cross again."

"I would have tried to contact you in another way, but this body has no capacity for mind magic."  Stiles gave her a sideways grin and tapped his temple with a finger.  "Not that I couldn't keep you out if you tried."

Vesta laughed.  "I have faith.  As you can imagine I utilize slight of mind techniques quite often, my life would be much more difficult without mind magic.  I apparently was born with almost no capacity for time magic, amongst others, which is why I did not see you coming until you were here.  It's a rare gift, you are lucky."

Stiles gestured toward the stone tablet in front of them.  "One of yours?"

"How could you tell?"

"It looks ancient, but I can feel it's less than a century old."

Vesta smiled fondly.  "It was one of my first.  Stole it from a museum in London.  You wouldn't believe how poorly guarded artifacts were in those days.  It's a wonder they weren't all stolen."

"What does the original do?"

"It bestows upon the user the ability to create and control some of the undead.  The buyer tried to use it to command zombies to kill me.  What he didn't realize was that I had already used the tablet myself and overpowered him with his own zombies.  I found a more congenial buyer."

"Sounds very comic book villain."

"One day I will tell you about my friendship with Robert Kane."

"Robert...?  Oh my god!  You mean Bob Kane!  The creator of Batman and..."  His mouth dropped open.

"It's story for another day Stiles."  She smiled.

"You're saying that you were the inspiration for Catwoman?"

"Partially...he had a fondness for 'dangerous' women and I was one of many inspirations, but certainly you did not come to talk to me about my colorful past."

Stiles lips became a thin line and his brow furrowed enough to rival one of Derek's greatest scowls.  "I suppose I need to know _what do I do now_?"

Vesta nodded in a way that told Stiles she had expected this question and had perhaps heard it before.  "There are certain things that only experience can teach you.  I'm afraid there are few teachers taking students on the West Coast that know more than you do.  Still, a network can assist you on your path and help you gain access to spells and materials.  I can give you some names."

"How do I go on with my life?  How do I reintegrate with my family and friends?  Over a third of my life was spent being someone else."

"That is not as easy of a question to answer.  It is different for everyone.  I only had my mother and we were not close.  I am afraid that this is one of those instances where everyone must find their own path."

Stiles took that in for a moment.  He noticed that people seemed to be avoiding where they were.  Vesta must have put up a glamour.  Part of him had wished she had an easy answer to his problem, but he knew that wasn't the way life worked.  How do I convince my father and my friends to stop treating me as if I might break?  How do I deal with knowing that Derek has feelings for me he won't acknowledge?  How do I deal with having this part of me no one can understand?  Part of him had known she couldn't answer those questions, that he would need to find this on his own.  He decided to ask her something she could.

"Vesta...there's something I need to know.  Did Gianni really have so many similarities to Derek or did the stone take my feelings for Derek and mold Gianni around him?"

"I don't remember there being any similarities between Gianni and your werewolf, but I don't remember Gianni that clearly."

"You don't?"

"I remember the training and the lessons mostly.  His lovers were mostly background noise to me."

"I can recall the training and the lessons, but Mei Ling and Gianni...my experience was everything about them."

"That's very interesting.  I think you had a very different connection to Moreau than myself or others did."  She paused and looked off as if lost in thought.  "I have been hired to perform a job, however I cannot complete the task by myself.  I have the feeling that you might be the person to assist me"

Stiles looked at her sideways.  "You want me to help you steal something?"

"Hear me out.  The object I have been hired to steal is quite powerful and quite valuable.  It is just one piece in a collection of magical items in the collection of a very powerful man."

"You're not really gonna sell me on this whole Robin Hood thing when I know you get paid millions to steal this stuff."

"One of the items in his collection is the Stone of Gianni."

Stiles body became rigid and his face flushed hot.  His fingers dug into the cushion on the bench and nearly ripped it apart.

"They defiled his grave!"

"Magical objects are a valuable commodity.  The priceless among the priceless.  Even something like the Stone of Gianni which yields no real power to its wielder is worth ten million dollars easily.  Grave robbing is hardly the least of their crimes."

Stiles fumed.  "How dare they!"

"If you help me retrieve my object, we can also retrieve the stone."

Stiles wasn't sure how he felt about that idea.  He only trusted Vesta so far.  Even if he had mind magic he couldn't read the mind of a powerful mage and if she was powerful enough she could also disguise her aura to cover any dishonesty.  He had no way of knowing if he could trust her, so he had to operate on the assumption that he couldn't.  Would this still make this a good idea?

"I'm not sure.  I'll have to think about it."

She nodded.  "I sense your wolf is coming, did you bring him along?"

"No," said Stiles, feeling the threads connecting he and Derek vibrate.  They had been a nagging tickle at the back of his mind.  "He followed me."

"Then I think it is time for me to take my leave.  I will be in touch Stiles Stilinski."

Using both the threads that connected them and his limited skills in divination, Stiles was able to see that Derek would pick up his scent from Times Square and find himself at the museum.  It was closing soon and Stiles wanted to feel the cool air so he made his way outside to the steps and sat down to contemplate what was driving Derek so hard so as to follow him here.  Derek had very few threads that connect him to anyone living.  Stiles started to wonder if maybe he hadn't underestimated how important those thin connections were to Derek.  If they were all he had, maybe he valued them more than most did?  Could the ties that he and Derek shared, the ones he thought weren't deep enough for his liking, be very important to the handsome loner?

Stiles felt a tug at his heart and when he looked up there was Derek standing fifteen feet in front of him.  He returned Derek's scowl with a smile and pushed himself up off of the stairs.

"What took you so long?  I was getting cold."

Stiles thought he saw Derek furrow his brow even more if that was possible.  Stiles put his arm through Derek's without realizing until after he'd done it.  Derek flinched, but did not turn away so Stiles left it there.

"You knew I was coming?"

"I sensed you.  Let's go to Little Italy and get real Italian food!"

"It's not safe.  Where were you going to stay tonight?"

"I was going to sleep at the airport.  I'm only in New York for one night Derek, I'm going to Little Italy for Italian food and to see if I can see real mobsters."

Derek's whole body clenched.

"Let's get a hotel room by the airport and order pizza."

The idea of being in a hotel room with Derek excited Stiles more than he thought it would.  He knew this wasn't code for Derek to get him into bed.  Derek was just being protective which felt really good to Stiles, but he knew that he had to start changing the power dynamics of their relationship and the sooner he started the better.

"No.  I'm going to Little Italy."

"Stiles, it was disputed territory when I was here last.  It wouldn't be good for someone like us to be caught down there by the wrong people."

"Someone like you or someone like me?"

Derek looked away.  "Someone like me."

"Because you're a werewolf?"

"Yes."

"There's two ways this can go down Derek.  I can go to Little Italy alone or you can come with me.  I'm not wasting my one night in New York on your paranoia."

There was Derek's body clenching and his usual growl.

"Fine.  But Little Italy is just tourist crap, the Italian's have all moved to Brooklyn."

They took the subway down to Canal Street and then walked up into Little Italy until they found a restaurant that Stiles felt was 'Italian enough'.  Stiles spoke Italian with the waiter which was a little rough since Stiles' Italian was European and 400 years old.  The waiter was still impressed that Stiles knew any Italian at all and they talked a fair bit.  Derek looked both confused and impressed.

"Have you always spoken Italian?"

"No, I was in Italy for four years during my other life."

"Oh."

The look of worry that fell over Derek's face told Stiles that he should change the subject.  He had told Derek, Scott, and Isaac about what had happened to him, but none of them seemed to fully grasp what that had meant to him.  Instead he decided to talk about the food and how great it was even though Stiles had to admit he'd had better.  Derek explained that the best Italian food was now in Brooklyn where Italian families lived.  Stiles was still happy to have gotten his Little Italy experience.

Derek wanted to take a cab to the airport, but Stiles loved the subway and wanted to take it to midtown to see the city at night.  New York city was not the kind of place the sheriff liked to visit so he'd never been here.  Even at night it was filled with life, he could sense the energies of the city rushing in different patterns.  It wasn't all positive energy, quite the opposite in fact, but it was like a giant living breathing creature made out of millions of humans and that excited him.  It was the opposite of living amongst the forests of Beacon Hills where instead of being filled with human energy, it was filled with the energy of nature.

After dinner they made their way back down to the Canal street subway station.  They just missed their train uptown.  Derek almost managed a smile as Stiles chattered away about how real New York seemed as compared to the movies.  Stiles wanted to ask Derek what his life had been like here, but Derek only seemed to ever offer up information about his life here when absolutely necessary.  He knew Derek moved to New York after the fire and he wondered how his six years here had made Derek the way he was.  He knew the boy Derek was before the fire and he knew the man he was today.  How much of his darkness was the fire and how much was what happened here?

Derek suddenly bristled and began to growl before turning sharply to his left.  Stiles looked to see two young Asian men dressed as though they had stepped out of a supernatural Hong Kong action film.  He also noticed that the four of them were the only people on the platform.  Stiles used the senses he had available to him.  They were certainly supernatural and their bodies were cold.  They could be zombies, but he assumed by the clothes and the attitude that they were vampires.

"You're out of your territory werewolf."

"We're tourists, not local.  Just stopped by for the food." said Derek in a slow even voice.

"So are we," said one of the vampires before they both raced toward them moving impossibly fast.

Derek shifted and placed himself low to the ground in front of Stiles to prepare for the attack.  Stiles threw out his hand and absorbed all of the forward momentum the vampires had propelling themselves forward toward Stiles and Derek.  He then used that kinetic energy to direct them towards each other.  Their heads hit together with a loud crack and they fell to the ground.

"You should be more hospitable to your guests," he said to them in his old Mandarin.  "You don't want to start a fight you can't finish."

"We have dealt with witches before!" cried the talker.  "You don't scare us."

Stiles didn't need mind magic to know he was lying.  They were terrified.

"You are barely thirty years old.  There is a reason most vampires don't live to see a century.  I know a simple spell that can turn vampires into marble.  Do you think your friend would like to see?"

The vampires pulled themselves up.  They didn't want to show weakness, but they also knew that they were in a lot of trouble.

"This isn't over!" the talker yelled in English before they dashed off the other direction.

"Stiles?  What just happened?"

"I told them we weren't interested in any pirate DVDs."  Stiles crossed his arms.  "That's like stealing from movie studios you know."

"How?"

"Because they don't get a return on their investment in the film.  You think Michael Bay's cocaine is going to pay for itself?"

Derek was not amused.  "How did you do that Stiles!?!"

"I lived another man's life for ten years Derek.  Ten years while that man was apprenticing himself to masters of magic in order to become a mage himself.  That knowledge was something I brought back with me."

He's said it before, but it hadn't seemed to sink in.  Stiles felt Derek's eyes all over him, as if he was suddenly noticing major features about him for the first time.

"I guess there's a difference between hearing that and really knowing it.  It's hard to really grasp that you're not the same person you were."

"I'm the same person Derek, I'm just more now.  Everything I was is still here, nothing went away."

Derek's eyes fell and he nodded as if lost in thought.  When they got on the next train Derek stood close and protective.  When Stiles leaned into him he didn't flinch or move away.  They walked around Times Square where people were coming out of late Broadway shows.  They went into a late night eatery where they had tiramisu and cannolis.

"I see you're making jokes again."

"Trying to reconnect with my old self again."

"It's still annoying...and good.  It's good Stiles."

Derek got some extra connolis to go so that Stiles would have something for breakfast before heading to his plane.  Derek then called a car service to take them out to a hotel by JFK.  The room was nothing fancy and had two beds.  Stiles fought the urge to climb into the bed with Derek.  He wanted to lose himself in his strong arms and the warmth of Derek's body, but he knew he shouldn't push Derek too fast.  He realized that he needed Derek in his life, but building the trust with Derek so that he would let him in would take some time.  He crawled into his bed, hugged the extra pillow, and dreamed of his loves past and future.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't expect this to be quite so long, but luckily jet-lag meant I had plenty of time to write when everyone else was sleeping. I will hopefully have the time to get the next chapter out by next week, but I am running around Spain right now.
> 
> My friend Bobby Jean is the blue haired waitress that speaks many languages at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. If you're ever there sit in her section. She generally gives good relationship advice even if your significant other is not a supernatural creature.
> 
> I hope this ended on a sweet note for everyone. In the next chapter Stiles is going to show us the bad-ass he's become!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: This gets seriously violent and a lot of people die or are maimed. You've been warned.
> 
> The rating on this might go up if Derek ever makes it past second base.

Foresight is limited even in the most powerful seers, but that doesn't stop Stiles from feeling like a failure when Isaac is nearly killed by the Argent cousins.  The whole thing reminded him too much of how he lost Gianni, which was still a fresh wound.  When Derek and Scott took Isaac to Deaton and didn't even tell Stiles until the next day, that made him furious.  Deaton is amazing at what he can do, but Stiles can do more.  They were still leaving him out of the loop as if he were a mundane, which had hardly applied to him since Scott was bitten.

Stiles confronted Derek and told him that none of the werewolves should be left alone lest they be targeted.  Derek saw his point, but was hesitant because he knew how little Scott and Isaac listened to him.  Instead Derek told them that Stiles was in danger and needed to be watched at all times.  It wasn't what Stiles had wanted, but it did have some of the desired effect that the younger wolves stayed close to him.

Spending extra time with Scott and Isaac gave him time to really look at their relationship.  It became obvious to him that Scott and Isaac were having sex, which wouldn't be a problem, but Isaac had fallen completely in love with Scott.  For Scott the relationship was nothing more than sex, a way for him to be physically intimate with someone while he and Allison pretended they weren't in love with each other.  Isaac might act tough on the outside, but Stiles knew that underneath it all he was a scared boy that just wanted love.  Isaac had lost so much already and Stiles didn't want him to be hurt more by the person he was most connected to in this world.

Of course, convincing a teenager that they should stop having sex with the person they are secretly in love with is easier said than done.  Approaching Isaac about it was probably not the correct solution.  Stiles knew who he had to confront and this wasn't going to be an easy conversation.

It was Scott's turn to watch over him and for once Isaac wasn't with them.

"What do you want to do?  X-Box?"  Scott's X-Box was under lock and key until he brought his grades up so it was no surprise that he wanted to play with Stiles'.

"Actually," said Stiles.  "I thought we could talk."

Scott looked a bit worried.  "About?"

"Isaac."

"What about Isaac?" asked Scott, drawing the words out slowly.

Stiles sat down at one end of the couch and Scott echoed his action.

"Isaac is in love with you.  You are not in love with him.  The more you have sex with him, the more it's just going to confuse and hurt him when you move on.  You need to stop."

"He's...we're..." Scott stammered.

Stiles pointed to himself.  "Magical senses."

The room was quiet for a few moments.  Scott had a hard time holding Stiles' gaze.  "It just sort of happened."

"I get that, but now it has to stop."

Everything seems pretty quiet for a few days.  Stiles could see timelines converging, but they were vague and blurry.  He saw the wolves and he saw the hunters.  He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Isaac dying because he threw himself in front of a bullet to save Scott.  He was going to have to strongly intervene to prevent harm from coming to those he loves.

Stiles waited by his jeep for Isaac since it was his turn to keep watch on Stiles.  Stiles felt him before he saw him, turning to face Isaac storming toward him, face full of fury.

"You had no right!"

Obviously he and Scott had the talk.

"He doesn't love you the way you love him."

"It's none of your business what we do!"

"It's my business because I care about you."

Isaac continued to yell and Stiles remained calm, taking all of the abuse that Isaac hurled out.  He tried to reassure Isaac that he cared about him and this was all for the best, but Isaac wasn't hearing it.  It was strange to feel like the adult in this situation, but of course he had lived ten years more than his physical age  He wished Scott wouldn't have told him that he had instigated all of this, but in the end it didn't matter.  It gave Isaac someone to blame other than Scott.  He would take this anger if it would mean that Isaac would be better off in the end.

Isaac finally got so frustrated with Stiles refusing to engage in the fight that he stormed off.  Then Stiles noticed a potential timeline move into prominence and clarity.  Without meaning to he'd set events in motion that could be turned to his advantage.  It would not take much for him to make this happen. 

It was time for him to act.

Stiles parked his jeep off the main drag in Beacon Hills.  He left everything in the jeep including putting his wallet, cell phone, and car keys inside the glove compartment.  He made his way down the street making himself as visible as possible.  Here and there he was recognized by business owners or classmates working in shops and he exchanged waves.  He had been out there nearly an hour and was starting to regret leaving his money in the jeep because now he was getting hungry.  He started to make his way back to the jeep when he felt a tingle shoot across the back of his neck.  He'd finally been spotted by the hunters.  He pretended not to notice them as they drove past and definitely did not look their way when they drove by again two minutes later.  He could see the timeline much more clearly now, they had called in to the Argent cousins to get the okay by now, he just had to hand himself over to them.

He took himself off of the main drag, making sure that they saw him.  He walked through a small park toward the community center that had been closed for renovations and then not reopened due to budget cuts.  On the other side of the building was a playground that had seen better days.  Remote so no one could see what happens there, but accessible by car so that they could drive right up to it.  It was the perfect place to be kidnapped.  He couldn't believe how long they were taking to get around to actually snatching him.

He sat in one of the swings and twirled himself back and forth.  He could feel a tingle in his head that told him Derek probably just found out that Isaac had left him alone.  He'd probably already tried to call Stiles and when he didn't answer because his phone was in the car he stared to freak out.  No...Derek rarely freaks out, but he does go ballistic.  Stiles felt really sorry for Isaac and would have to apologize to him later.  He really hoped that these hunters got around to kidnapping him before a pack of overprotective werewolves picked up his scent downtown.

Just when Stiles was afraid that he might have lost his pursuers and wasted all of that effort, two black SUVs screeched to a halt nearby him.  He thought about causally waiting for them to grab him, but that would make it look too obviously like a setup.  When they burst out of their trucks he pretended to get himself tangled in the swing trying to escape.  He then fumbled away slipping on grass and pretending to trip over a tree root in his panic.

They never suspected a thing.

He was a little disappointed that they didn't even feel the need to sedate him or even binding his feet before throwing him in the back.  He had been looking forward to getting all Bene Gesserit on whatever sedative they used.  Maybe the next group that kidnaps him will try to sedate him...it's not like this is his first kidnapping and it probably wouldn't be his last.  He thought about getting a t-shirt that said "BAIT" on it, but that would probably only upset Derek and Scott.  He yelled a bit and kicked the inside wall of the vehicle to make it seem as though he didn't want to be taken.

It was important to keep up appearances.

When they got to their base of operations in an abandoned industrial park a few miles outside of town they drug Stiles out and presented him to a very smug looking Craig Argent.

"How nice of you to join us Stiles."

Stiles did his best to seem scared.  He even made sure his hands quivered.  "You could have just sent a Facebook invite.  I still check that you know."

"Such a smart mouth.  It won't seem so funny when that pack of wolves you run with leap to their deaths."

"I think you overestimate my importance to them.  They're just going to be glad I'm not there to annoy them anymore."

"You're like a brother to Scott McCall and Derek Hale would storm through Hell to protect you."

Was whatever was going on between he and Derek's so obvious that even these hunters saw it?  Maybe Stiles was not as observant as he thought he was.  "If that's true then it doesn't seem like a wise move to kidnap me."

"I didn't say they were going to make it out the other side."

He gestured with his head and the two guys holding his arms drug him into a room at the back of the building.  As they made their way Stiles took inventory of the contents of the rooms, the men he saw, and the doors and windows.  They tied him to a chair as he created a mental map in his head and formulated his plans.  It had been a while since he had really gotten to cut loose with his abilities and the first time in this body.  He felt guilty at how excited this made him.

"You really shouldn't have kidnapped me.  I'm grounded and my dad's going to be pissed.  He's the sheriff you know."

"Shut up."

Stiles smiled at the hunter, but he was feeling the threads connecting him to Derek, Scott, and Isaac vibrating agitatedly.  His wolves had found out he had been taken.  He was going to have to act fast.

Stiles started to pull the heat energy from the area into himself.  He had originally thought to try and be somewhat subtle, but the guards had started to notice and when they were able to see their breath they went on full alert.

"What the hell?"

Stiles concentrated heat into the rope holding his hands behind his back until it came apart when he pulled on it.  He swung his leg up and kicked the guard in front of him so that he tumbled backwards.  It was difficult to get a good angle on the one just behind him so he twisted and hit him in the chest with his palm, pulling enough heat out of him to drop his core temperature about twenty degrees.  His body went into shock and he fell to the ground.

The kicked guard was pulling himself upright when Stiles landed a blow to his windpipe, damaging it, but not enough force to completely crush it and kill him.  He then brought a blow down onto his right collarbone, breaking it and making his arm useless.  He didn't want any of these guys getting up before he was done here.

Stiles probed his senses out and felt all of the life forms in the area.  Twenty-two hunters remained, those that weren't patrolling the perimeter were grouped into one area waiting for the werewolves to attack.  If they were more spread out he could move slowly through the groups and take them out each quietly, they were expecting an attack from outside not from within.  The grouping made this plan a bit more difficult and less certain of him completing it effectively.  The alternate plan was chaos: disorient them so that they think something is coming at them that isn't.

Stiles smiled.  He was hoping it would come to this.

The next room was empty so Stiles moved to where he could see the vehicles parked outside.  He pulled more heat from around him and then took that energy and focused it into the gas tank of a nearby SUV.  It was only seconds before the vehicle exploded.  He then directed heat from the first explosion to ignite the vehicle next to it and from that one to the next.  A daisy chain of fire spread across the parking lot, blooming as it hit each vehicle until all eleven cars and two motor cycles had burst into flames.  Hunters came rushing from the surrounding woods and inside the building.

Stiles shouldn't be enjoying this so much, but he really, really was.

The next room was presumable meant to be a storage area and the hunters had a large weapons cache here along with three of their soldiers.  Stiles converted some of the heat energy he'd absorbed and turned it into kinetic energy with which he rattled the door loudly.  All three of them moved to the door which allowed Stiles to sneak out and into the room.  Once they'd checked that nothing was on the other side of the door they came back into the room and bolted the door.  Two stayed near the entrance, but the third moved further into the room.  Stiles came up behind him and put him into a sleeper hold while draining him of life energy to ensure he went down quickly.

"What do you think's going on out there?"

"They're probably here which is why we gotta stay put."

"I just wanna see some action man, kill some fucking freaks!"

"You'll get your chance.  I've killed plenty and there's always more to kill."

Anger rose up in Stiles despite his desire to control it.  These were the kind of men who killed people like Derek's family.  He thought of the countless other innocent werewolves that had been hunted down and murdered by people like this.  Stiles wanted to inflict pain.

He quickly pulled heat from the room and directed it into the semi-automatic rifles they were holding.  Not enough to set off the bullets, but enough that the two soldiers threw the guns down with scalded hands.  Stiles came behind the enthusiastic young soldier with a running kick to his spine, knocking him to his knees before completely disabling him with a downward blow to the collarbone.  The more seasoned hunter was already coming at him with knife drawn.  He swung at Stiles, but he easily dodged the blow while bringing himself in closer to the soldier.  Stiles shot a hand forward to the soldier's face and connected with skin.  He interfaced with the man's nervous system and used his life magic to make all of his pain receptors fire.  The man crumbled into a screaming ball of agony before blacking out from the pain.

Despite his will to control himself Stiles was overcome with rage.  He thought about Derek's parents and his little brother.  He thought about the carefree boy Derek was and damaged man he'd become.  He couldn't not see their faces.  He reached down and pulled life energy from the man, draining him nearly to death before stopping just short.  He wanted these men to know pain.  He worked his way through the man's nervous system, permanently fusing his pain receptors so that he would never know a life without searing agony.  He then went over the younger soldier who now looked upon the boy with fearful eyes.  He tried to push Stiles away with his remaining good arm, but Stiles grabbed it and used the skin contact to work his way through his voluntary nervous system, ripping and shredding as he went along.  The soldier began to tremor all over his body.  He would never hold a gun, or walk unassisted, ever again.

When Stiles rose to clear his head he noticed the threads connecting his wolves to him were vibrating madly.  He knew they were agitated and getting closer.  He had hoped to be done with this before they arrived and found themselves facing a small army with wolfsbane bullets.  He had let himself be too slow about this.  If Isaac, Scott, or Derek were killed trying to rescue him he wouldn't forgive himself.  He had hoped to punish each of the hunters individually, but the time for that had run out.  He still had nineteen hunters to tear through.

There were canisters of gasoline stored in the room which made him wonder if these hunters had ever played a video game before.  He took some of the stored heat energy he had and converted it to kinetic energy to push the stores of weapons and ammunition together into a large pile in the center of the room.  He then opened the canisters of gasoline and dumped them all over the pile.  Converting energy from one type to another was never easy for any mage and was still extremely taxing on his system.  As he made his way to the door he reached down and pulled some life energy out of the younger soldier he hadn't yet drained.  He pulled the door shut after himself and used a little telekinesis to lock the deadbolt from the inside.

Stiles could hear shouting from the rest of the building and he was certain that someone would come check on the back rooms soon enough.  Hunters were crossing the hallway up ahead so he darted from shadow to shadow to keep himself hidden.  A secondary entrance let him slide into the next room which appeared to be their main ops center.  They had video monitors displaying the perimeter of the building and a communications system to relay information.  Two hunters were at the desk frantically looking through the video feeds, trying to see where the assault was coming from.  One was searching through the room, trying to find a fire extinguisher.  Four were gathering more weapons, two of which were arguing.  One of those two was Craig Argent's little brother Alex.

Stiles had a bone to pick with Alex Argent.

Stiles concentrated briefly and sent the heat energy he'd absorbed earlier through the wall to the room he'd just left and into the pile of weapons and ammunition he'd doused with gasoline.  The roar as it caught fire could be heard in this room and it put the hunters on alert.  They tried to figure out the noise when the first bullet exploded from the heat.  Soon others joined it and it began to sound as though someone had lit off fireworks in the next room.  Alex and two other hunters grab what guns they have near them and race toward the other room.  The fourth in their group rushes over to the surveillance equipment.

"What's on the monitors?"

"We don't have cameras in there."

Stiles pulled some of the heat from the fire into himself for later and then snuck behind the hunter looking for the fire extinguisher, silently taking him out of the fight.  He then pulled all of the surplus life energy out of him to ensure he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.  He could hear the hunters slamming against the door of the other room trying to break in.  Surely it wouldn't take them long to break down the door and rescue their fellow hunters?  Heated words were flying back and forth over their radios, a cacophony that Stiles couldn't make out and he doubted they could either.  They were panicking which is right where Stiles wanted them.

The other group's fourth looked as though he was getting ready join the them.  Of the three by the monitors, he was the only one armed and standing.  Stiles ran at the group, but the armed hunter saw him at the last minute and turned.  Stiles knocked his gun arm up with his left arm right as the hunter was firing his weapon.  Stiles used his right palm to snap the hunters lower ribs and drive them into his abdomen.  He slid his left arm along the hunter's right, until his hand grasped that wrist, and then in one fluid motion, slid underneath it and back, yanking the shoulder out of it's socket.  The younger hunter went down in a heap of agony.

Of the two at the monitors, one had lunged at him while the other dove for a gun.  Stiles shifted his weight and used the lunger's momentum to throw him.  He grabbed the glass coffee pot from the coffee maker and threw it at the head of the hunter moving toward his gun.  The pot shattered on impact and covered him in hot coffee, but did not slow him down much.  Stiles made a mental note that that move worked better in the movies than it does in real life.  He raced toward the hunter, landing a kick on his head just as he was lifting the gun.  The hunter dropped the gun and Stiles came down on the base of his skull with his elbow, knocking him out.

Stiles had been worried that he'd let them get too far apart from each other and this was confirmed when the hunter he threw spun on him with a rifle in hand.  Stiles had hoped to take down the three of them without using magic, but time was more pressing than proving something to himself.  He used the stored heat energy he had and scalded the hunter's eyes.  He screamed in pain, one hand flying to his face while he started to shoot wildly around the room with the other.  Stiles went low to the ground, shot toward him, and came up with a knockout blow to his chin.

Smoke from the other room had started to find it's way over to this part of the building. Stiles took one of the walkie talkies from the table in hand, pressed the talk button, and tried to feel the frequency it was broadcasting on.  Electricity was still new to him and he wasn't quite used to manipulating it yet.  Then he pulled electricity from the wiring in the building into himself and tried to generate a large burst along the same frequency, hoping to burn out the hunters' radios and crippling their ability to communicate.  He wasn't sure how effective he was so for good measure he cooked the surveillance system and all of their computers with a power surge.

As the hunters drug their fallen comrades into the command center, Stiles easily took them out.  He felt a twinge of guilt about attacking them when they were so vulnerable.  Stiles looked down at the last guy he felled.  He didn't look much older than himself, probably still a teenager.  He had to wonder what would drive someone so young to be full of so much hate that they would hunt down and kill another human being?  Not that Stiles was above killing, but he would never hunt down innocents the way these men did.

Stiles pulled himself into the shadows as Alex Argent entered the room dragging the fallen hunter.  It only took Alex a moment to notice the state of the room and pull his weapon.

"Alex...you've been a bad boy Alex."  Stiles threw his voice so it seemed to be coming different parts of the room.

"Stilinski?  What are you getting at"

"You are probably my least favorite psychopath Alex...and I've known more than my share in my life."

"We're going to kill them Stilinski.  We're going to kill every last one of your rabid dogs and I'm going to make sure you watch."

"I heard how you chained those werewolf kids in New Mexico up and set them on fire before finally killing them.  One of them was only three years old.  You're a sick fuck Alex and you deserve every horrible thing that ever happens to you."

Stiles came in from the side with a kick to Alex's stomach while a blow to his gun arm knocked his gun away.  Stiles moved to strike again, but Alex parried the blow and landed one of his own.  Unlike the men working for them, Alex was highly trained.  He was as good as Stiles, maybe better.  Stiles brought his knee up for a midsection blow, but Alex moved with it so it was not as damaging.  He then grabbed Stiles arm and twisted, forcing Stiles to move with it and put himself in a much weakened position.

"When did you suddenly learn to fight Stiles?  Two months ago you were useless."

Stiles blocked blow after blow from the stronger man, finally getting in a position where he could do a floor sweep and knock Alex to the ground.  While he's stunned, Stiles brought his weight down with his elbow in the middle of Alex's chest, knocking the wind out of him.  Before he could move into position for his finishing blow, Stiles felt the threads connecting him to his packs vibrate madly.  They had arrived.  Three werewolves walking into a hunter ambush.  Stiles may have crippled their forces, but the hunters could still wipe them out.

A rush of panic distracts him long enough for Alex to gain a superior position.  The time for elegant fighting has passed, Stiles needs to finish this now.  He rolled into Alex and grappled with him, getting him into a hold so that he can make prolonged skin to skin contact.  Stiles interfaced with Alex's nervous system and disabled him from the neck down.  Alex's body goes slack.

"You are a monster and a murderer.  I'm making sure that you never hurt anyone ever again."

Stiles slips into his sensory cortex and disconnects his brain from his vision and his sense of touch.  He burns them out, deadens them forever.

"Wait!  What have you done?"

"You'll be able to move again in a few hours, but you'll never see or feel anything ever again.  You won't be able to hunt or harm anyone again.  This is much better than you deserve."

"You can't do this!"

"If you keep annoying me I'll disconnect the speech centers of your brain too."

There were twelve hunters left and he needed to protect his wolves.

Stiles made his way to the entrance of the building where the barricades were.  The gunfire outside sounded like a war.  A young hunter rushed into the building.  He was surprised to see Stiles, who took him out with little effort.  Another was at the door with his back to Stiles, firing out into the yard.  Stiles came up behind him and put him into a choke hold and drained the life energy out of him until he wouldn't wake up for a day or more.

Stepping forward, Stiles finally got a view of the battle zone in the parking lot.  The perimeter guard had fallen back to positions near the entrance to the building behind the barricade and the burning vehicles.  Five hunters with heavy rifles firing out into the night.  Their attention was directed out, not back at him.  And out there beyond the barricade were his packs.

Derek and Scott were pinned down by the hunters.  Shot.  Bleeding.  Wolfsbane poisoned.

Isaac was down.  Covered in blood.  Not moving.

Stiles chest clenched and he found he could not breath.  He was overcome with panic and rage.  Almost without thinking he punched a hole in a fuel barrel near the side of the building with his mind.  The gasoline started to slosh out and Stiles muttered a quick spell, one of the few he knew by memory.  It was nearly instinctual.  The fuel became alive, tendrils moving like a school of eels through water.  They quickly snaked their way across the yard until they found their targets where they hid behind barricades, dousing the five hunters until they were soaked with gasoline.  Stiles pulls a little heat into himself from the burning cars.  A little is all it takes.  Enough for a flame.

The ignition caused a roar as the hunters burst into flames.

Some panic and flail while others try to put the flames out, but their clothes are soaked with fuel.  Their screams are pulled away from them as the fire consumes all of the nearby air.  It doesn't take long for them to stop moving.

"Stiles!"

Derek starts to rush forward, but then a hail of bullets send him diving for cover.

"Give it up Argent!  This fight is over!"

"Now I don't know about that," says Craig Argent as he slipped out of darkness with gun in hand to stand between Stiles and his pack, facing out toward Derek.

Stiles stretched his senses out and felt for life-forms.  Three down beyond the barricade, must have been the packs.  "There's only two hunters left Derek."

"Two of you left?  You can't win this Argent," growled Derek.

"No, but I can kill him," said Craig and turned the gun on Stiles.

Stiles threw his hand forward and sealed the bullet in the chamber to its casing.  When Craig pulled the trigger, the powder in the gun could not propel the bullet forward, so instead it blew out of the back of the shell causing the gun to explode in his hand.

Craig cried out in agony at his bloody hand.  Stiles slapped a telekinetic blow to the back of his knees and he was knocked to the ground.  Stiles walked over and kicked him onto his back.  He could feel his pack's eyes on him.  He could feel the life pattern of the final hunter grow faint as he ran away into the night.

"You will never harm people I love ever again.  You will never hunt and kill innocent people ever again.  I can't send you to prison for the rest of your life which is what you deserve, because I can't prove it in a court of law, but I can do something far worse.  When people hear about you it will be a warning to all hunters that their time is coming to an end."

"Stiles..." Derek said moving toward him.  Stiles held up a hand to stop him.  He didn't want Derek to interfere.

Stiles placed his hand on the side of Craig's head, almost lovingly, and interfaced with his nervous system.  Then he stared to pull.  He pulled life energy out of him until nerve cells withered and died and turned to dust.

"I've destroyed your voluntary nervous system.  You're now locked in to your body.  You will never be able to control a muscle ever again, never be able to communicate or raise a hand to harm someone ever again.  You can see and hear the world, but never speak back.  Your body is now a prison that you will slowly rot in until you finally die."

Stiles rose to stand over Craig Argent and looked at his pack who were know stunned silent.  He walked over to where Isaac lay, eyes full of fear as Stiles approached.  He knelt down next to Isaac and tried to bring as much warmth into his face as possible.

"I'm going to pull the bullets out of your body and then I'm going to neutralize the wolfsbane alright?"

Isaac gave just the barest nod.  Stiles put his hand on Isaac to kill his pain and used his telekinesis to pull the bullets out of Isaac's body.  They danced in the air above Isaac's chest and the young werewolf's eyes were full of amazement.  He then placed his other hand on Isaac until he could feel the wolfsbane coursing through his system.  He broke apart the chemical compound until it was inert and Isaac's body could easily flush it out of his system.  He thought about healing him as well, but decided to let his werewolf healing do the work.  Transmuting the wolfsbane had taken a lot of energy out of him and he was pretty wiped.  Altering substances at the molecular level was much harder than redirecting energy.

"C'mon Derek," Stiles said a forced grin.  "Let's get these pups home."

*****

Stiles leaned against the kitchen counter drinking an orange soda.  His body ached from the fighting, but he found a slight pleasure in it like one does from a hard workout, so he was reluctant to heal himself with his magic just yet.  He felt no surprise when he heard a car pull up to the house and the car door slam.  The familiar knock on the door confirmed his suspicions.

"It's open Derek.  I'm in the kitchen."

He knew he didn't need to raise his voice, that Derek could hear him outside and was listening.  Derek came into the kitchen silently and stopped himself about ten feet away from Stiles.  When Stiles glanced up he noticed that Derek's gaze was on the ground.  Despite the chill in the evening air outside, Derek was not wearing his leather jacket, which told him that Derek was distracted.  Normally Derek used every opportunity to wear the jacket because he thought it made him more intimidating.  Then again, maybe Stiles was wrong, maybe he purposefully didn't wear it.

"What you did was stupid and dangerous," said Derek quietly.  He didn't sound angry, he sounded hurt.

"They kidnapped me," replied Stiles.  "Though to be fair I made sure I was right where they would find me."

"You could have been hurt...or worse."

Stiles could have seen the swirl of emotions that ran through Derek even if he wasn't able to see his aura.  There was nothing he wanted to do more than take Derek's pain away.  The thought of it overwhelmed him.  He crossed the room so that he was a foot away from Derek.  When Derek didn't move away Stiles reached one hand up onto Derek's neck and the other at the base of Derek's ribcage and pulled Derek into him.  He put his nose against the nape of Derek's neck and felt the warm tickle of Derek's stubble against his cheek.  Derek's hands found their way to Stiles' waist.  His arms encircled Stiles and pulled him into a strong embrace.

"Stiles."

The hunger with which Derek had said his name caused Stiles face to flush and his heart to pound.  Stiles closed his eyes so he could envelope himself in the touch and smell of Derek.  The brush of Derek's cheek against his made him shudder.  Where Derek touched him his flesh was full of yearning and he wished that every square inch of his body could be touched by Derek all at once.  The moment was so perfect that Stiles didn't want it to end.  He wanted to spend an eternity wrapped in Derek's arms.

When Derek pulled back a bit Stiles felt himself begin to fall from his high, but he soared once again when Derek's lips found his.  First they brushed against his and then they parted slightly, gently teasing out a wetter kiss.  Stiles slid his hand up to the back of Derek's head and pushed them together.  Derek's lips parted and his tongue probed gently against Stiles mouth which opened to receive him.  Stiles wasn't sure what Derek's mouth tasted like, but he was sure that his tasted of longing and hope.

Stiles felt Derek's body shudder and stiffen.  Stiles pulled back from the kiss and searched Derek's eyes for what was going on with him.  "If you're not comfortable with this, just say the word and we'll stop."

Derek said nothing.  Instead he slid his hand up to the back of Stiles neck and pulled him into a kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. Writing the Scott and Isaac parts were actually really difficult despite being so short and I wanted to get them right. Also this chapter is almost three times as long as I thought it would be. (Being distracted by the beautiful men in Barcelona isn't helping either.) I would have broken it up into two chapters if I hadn't written the first part last.
> 
> The final two chapters might take a month or so to get out because I'm heading to Berlin in a couple of days and I don't know what my living situation is going to be like. I'll try to get them out soon. I know what it's like to have to wait for the final chapters of a fic!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a month to update. Berlin is a lot more fun (and busy) than I thought. Been taking German classes which have been sucking my time.

It had been eleven days since he and Derek had kissed and Stiles hadn't heard from him.  This was the longest he'd gone without seeing Derek in a long time.  He knew that Derek had a lot of issues to work out and he was doing his best not to take it personally, but not feeling bad about this was a little difficult.  There was nothing he wanted to do more than to lose himself in the warmth of Derek's body.

He got the letter in the mail when he got home from school that afternoon.  It was a short letter asking him if he wanted to join Vesta in the acquisition of certain objects of particular value and if his wolf would also be joining them.  She included an RSVP card and a postage paid envelope.  The formality of it all made him smile.  He mailed his reply the next day and started making arrangements.

Danny had been a little skeptical when Stiles had asked to meet him out at the greasy spoon, probably assuming that Stiles was asking him out on a date or worse: relationship advice.  Instead Stiles bought him a coke and told him a story about how his best friend was bitten by a werewolf and their life had changed forever.  Then he altered the color of  the table they were sitting at and changed the shape of the salt and pepper shakers to give his story some added validity.  It was a bit much for Danny to take in all at once so Stiles sat quietly while he processed.

The bell on the door chimed when Isaac entered the diner.  He seemed to make a point of slowly moving toward the booth they were in, dragging his little cloud of anger along with him.  You pull the bullets from a guy's body and neutralize the poison that was killing him and he's still mad at you for breaking him up with his not-boyfriend?  Stiles was realizing that teenagers were much more difficult to deal with than he was previously aware.  His scheme might not go off as well as he had planned.

"I'm here," Isaac announced to the table.  Stiles motioned for him to sit.  Isaac hesitated, taking in both Danny and Stiles, before sitting next to Danny.  Stiles called the waitress over.

"Danny here will have mushroom Swiss burger, cooked medium, no pickle, and a mint shake.  Isaac will have a double bacon cheeseburger with everything, cooked rare, and a chocolate shake.  They'll share a plate of cheese fries and I'll have a large order of curly fries to go."

The waitress left to drop the order off at the kitchen and Danny finally spoke, "How do you know what I order?"

"Neither of you might realize it, but I watch you.  I notice the little details about my friends.  Danny, you've dated emotionally selfish jerks because you have a lot of love to give and a need to nurture.  Isaac here also has a lot of love to give, but he has lost a lot in his life and is in need of some nurturing."  Stiles gestured from one to the other.  "A need to nurture, in need of nurturing.  Both great guys."

Isaac face held a mixture of surprise and slight fear.  "You're setting us up?"

"Yes.  I wanted to try and be more nuanced about this, but I'm leaving town soon and I'm not sure how long I'll be gone so I've decided to expedite things.  Now I'm going to go up to the counter, pay for your meals, and collect my curly fries because I'm technically still grounded.  Don't fuck this up."

And with that Stiles got up and followed his nose to the cash register where his curly fries awaited.  Once in his jeep, he sent a text to Derek telling him that he was going to leave town to work with Vesta on a project.  Despite twelve days of radio silence, the reply came almost immediately:

<Where R U?  Coming there.>

<Town.  Home in 10.>

Derek and his car were in front of the house before he got home.  He marched across the lawn and was inches away from Stiles by the time he got out of his jeep.

"Curly fry?"

"What do you think your doing?"

"Offering you some of my deep fried bounty?"

Derek furrowed his brow and scowled extra hard.  Stiles wanted to reach out and touch him.  No, Stiles wanted to wrap himself around Derek, bury his face into his neck, and inhale his scent.  Derek's posture was not particularly inviting at that moment so Stiles instead headed toward the house.

"Vesta needs help stealing a particularly valuable object.  In exchange she's going to help me get something."

"You're not going."

Stiles had to admit to himself that there was a part of him that liked possessive protective Derek.  The sentiment anyway.  He wasn't about to actually let Derek control him and he was sure Derek knew that.  The fact that he wanted to meant that Derek cared, but he was going to have to work on finding Derek some healthier ways to express his emotions.

"I am going and the only question is whether you are coming with me or not."

Stiles walked through the front door, leaving it open so Derek could follow.

"She's dangerous.  Being around her is dangerous."

"Living in Beacon Hills is dangerous Derek.  The question is, are you going to let me go alone?"

Derek didn't say yes, but he didn't say no either.

Two days later the doorbell rang and Stiles opened it to find an OvernightExpress guy standing there with a package for him.  The envelope said it was from Forbidden Planet Comics in New York City.  Inside were plane tickets to Barcelona and passports for himself and Derek.  The names on the passports and plane tickets were Sam and Dean Winchester.  Stiles had to admit beneath the somber mystic exterior, Vesta had a sense of humor.

<Flight leaves Friday at 12.  Should I pick you up?>

It only takes a moment for Derek to text him back.

<I'm driving.>

Friday morning Stiles had a small bag packed, just some essentials, before he headed out the door.  He left a note for this father.

_I'm going on walkabout for a few days or so.  There are things I need to do and explaining them to you isn't going to help.  I'm not the kid I used to be and eventually you'll come to see that.  I know you're going to be mad, but I don't want you to worry because I'm fine.  I'm not alone, someone is watching after me.  Scott doesn't know so don't bother grilling him.  I love you.  Despite these things I do which make you crazy, I hope you fully understand how much I love you Dad._

Derek drove them to the airport in silence.  His scowl was legendary.  Stiles occasionally made small talk, but Derek only grunted or growled in response.  They got on their plane without issue.  Stiles had never flown first class before.  He tried to order a drink, his passport said he's 21, but Derek told him no, so he got a ginger ale instead.  Stiles lifted the armrest between them and snuggled in next to Derek.  Derek didn't say anything or pull away, but he didn't snuggle back.  He knew that being next to Derek made him feel safer and it's the only way he'd get any sleep on that flight.

Stiles had never been to another country before so he was expecting customs to be intimidating like it was in the movies.  It was easier than the time he went through security in Seattle.  When they got to passport control they approached the booth together and handed their passports to the officer.

"How long are you staying in Spain?" asked the officer in clearer English than many Americans spoke.

"Two weeks."

"Sam and Dean Winchester...you brothers?"

"Married," said Stiles who suppressed a grin as Derek bristled.  "Finally able to afford our honeymoon."

"Congratulations, Barcelona is a very romantic city," the officer said handing their passports back to them with a smile.

When they left passport control there was a man in a suit waiting there with a sign that read "Winchester".  Derek raised an eyebrow when he exchanged looks with Stiles, but they both followed the man to an expensive town car that took them to a fancy hotel across from a gigantic surreal looking church that was under construction.  As the porter was leaving after showing them to their suite, Derek pulled out a few American dollars and apologized to him, possibly for not having Euros to give him.

Stiles was overcome by the view.  The church across the street was called la Sagrada Familia and apparently had been under construction on and off for over one hundred years.  It looked like something from an alien planet and Stiles couldn't get over how awesome it was.  He was already in love with Europe and he'd only seen the one view.

He didn't notice Derek going into the bathroom or turning the shower on, but he noticed it shut off and Derek emerging a few minutes later with only his underwear on and a towel thrown over his shoulder.  He's not sure when he stopped breathing, but he took a quick sudden breath in when he felt his chest constricting.  He'd seen Derek shirtless before, but that was...before.  Before things happened between them and before Stiles had really processed his feelings for him.  Usually when Derek had his shirt off Stiles was pulling bullets or arrows or poison out of him.  Tonight there was nothing like that.  It was just them alone in a honeymoon suite in a beautiful European city.

Stiles feels every fiber of his being pulled toward Derek.  He crosses the room toward him, but Derek gave him very strange signals.  The look Derek gave him was serious, bordering on cold.  He reached out to touch Derek and found his wrist being grabbed by Derek in mid-motion.

"Stop."

Stiles was taken aback.  "Why?"

Stiles shifted his vision and saw the threads between them vibrating in all kinds of strange ways.  Derek's aura was a swirl of color.  There was affection and attraction coming from both of them, but there was also hurt, anger, frustration, and fear coming from Derek.  A shocking amount of fear.  Stiles didn't understand what he could have done to hurt Derek and why Derek Hale of all people would fear him.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm going to bed."

Stiles wasn't sure what to do with all of this information.  After being abruptly shut down Stiles left the bedroom without a word, ordered a ridiculous amount of room service, and watched BBC streaming on the television until he could barely sit up anymore.  He went back to the bedroom and Derek was on the far edge of the bed asleep or pretending to be.  He thought that the need to wrap himself around Derek would keep him up all night, but he fell asleep soon after crawling into bed.

Derek was awake before he was, doing whatever broody werewolves do in the morning.  Pissing around the perimeter of the room perhaps.  Stiles had an achy Derek sized hole in his chest that only got worse the more he thought about it so he ordered room service for the two of them and then got into the shower to spend some quality time with his hand.  He was relieved that the food was there by the time he got out so that he didn't have to find something else to distract himself while he waited.

When Vesta knocked, Derek answered the door without his shirt on and gestured her inside wordlessly.  Stiles begins to wonder if Derek showed off the skin intentionally as a way to gain power over the situation.  It definitely made Stiles pay attention to him.  Stiles saw Vesta immediately take notice of their body language toward each other.  She gave Derek a probing look.  She knows better than to try and read Stiles' mind, but from the look on her face there's a strong chance she was reading Derek's.  Stiles was torn between feeling protective of Derek and wishing he could read Derek's thoughts himself.

Vesta went through all of the particulars of the facility.  Stiles was listening, but his focus was on Derek.  It was very hard for him to focus on the task at hand when what he really wanted to be doing was leaning into Derek.  If Derek would just put his arm around him, Stiles was sure that he would be the happiest guy in the world.  At that point he would have settled for some hand holding or even knocking their legs together.  There was a gaping hole inside of Stiles' body that could only be filled by having his body up against Derek's.  His realization of how bad he had it for Derek was interrupted by something Vesta said.

"Wait...guards?" said Stiles.  "I don't want Derek to deal with the guards."

"Why not?" Vesta asked.  Derek also seemed interested in this answer.

"Because we can take down the guards without hurting them and that's basically all Derek's good for."

Derek gave him an angry look.

"In this situation, I didn't mean in general..." added Stiles quietly.  Wow.  Bad choice of words.  Bad bad bad choice of words.  Derek did his _I'm not pouting_ pout until they left the hotel that night.

The building was large, old, and intimidating.  It held a private art collection that was made available to the public on weekends.  If you wanted a place to hide a priceless collection of magical artifacts in plain sight this wasn't a half-bad place to do it.  As far as heists go, this one looked like it could be taken down by the Ocean's Five if it weren't for the runes.  Runes on the walls, on with windows, and carved into the locks.  Runes that prevented magic from being used on them. 

Their first stop was an underground utility access tunnel that they reached through the subway tunnels.  From there they accessed the point where the building's security data-feed connected with the outside world.  If they cut the connection the off-site monitors were alerted.  Vesta had a device that would feed them the information they need, but they had to do it without interrupting the signal for even a fraction of a second.  Vesta went over the details with him as if she's instructing him, before she puts the device inline and cuts the connection.

They have twenty minutes at best.

"Can you shut down the system?" Vesta asked Stiles.

They were on the roof of the building now accessing the building level security system.  Stiles shook his head grimly.  "I'm not so good with electronics yet."  Vesta nodded and then went about explaining to him how she was accessing the system and shutting it down.  Once that was done it was time to move on to the human element.

The guards are armed with guns and bullets that have runes on them so they wouldn't be able to use their telekinesis to deflect them.  That meant they would have to be sneaky which Stiles was working on being better at, but Vesta was the master of it.  She was like a ninja and Stiles definitely found himself jealous of her moves.  He and Vesta took out the guards and she even showed him a trick for quickly subduing them using only life magic.  They worked quickly because the clock was running and they didn't have a lot of time.

Derek looked frustrated.  Stiles understood that he was a man of action and being on the sidelines was making him antsy.  He wasn't going to have to wait long.  Once all of the guards were sleeping not so peacefully, they penetrated the main part of the building and got into the secret area below.  The mundane locks were easy enough to bypass in a minute or two.  There was only one way into the vault outside of drilling through a couple hundred feet of bedrock and that was through this long hallway that was a gauntlet of traps and trials.

First up was some deadly puzzle set into the pattern of the floor.  Vesta had pulled the solution out of the mind of one of the retired caretakers of the vault.  They had thought the information was wiped from his mind, but she had her ways.  The puzzle was inlaid into the tiles of the floor and reminded Stiles of the Hellraiser puzzle boxes.  She got to work and Stiles focused on Derek.  He was starting to feel bad for all the times he made fun of Scott for not being able to talk about anything but Allison, because he was finding it hard to think about anything other than Derek.  Part of participating in this caper was to undo what he perceived as a wrong, but he also knew it would mean that Derek would spend time with him and that was ultimately the most important thing to him.

Once Vesta was done with the floor puzzle they crossed that room and entered another room they'd nicknamed "the gallery".  It was large and wide with two rows of marble columns and six statues recessed into alcoves in the walls.  Derek handed a sledgehammer each to he and Vesta and kept one for himself.  Then it was time for Derek to finally get into the action.  He stepped onto the floor first.

Immediately the six stone statues came to life, stepping out of the alcoves, and beginning to advance on them.  They had planned for this.  This is what the sledgehammers were for: Smashing stone golems.  Then something unexpected happened.  Six more golems stepped out of the alcoves.  Six golems made of bronze metal.

"What the hell!?!"

Vesta gave Stiles a look that tried to express that she was not surprised by this, but she clearly failed.  Sledgehammers could break apart stone golems, if they were lucky they might dent the bronze ones a bit while their fleshy arms were torn off one at a time.

"Stiles get out of here!" Derek yelled as he took a step forward and stood his ground waiting for the golems.

"Not a chance!"

Stiles and Vesta might not be able to use their magic against the golems, but they could use their magic on themselves and on the sledgehammers they brought.  Stiles began to mutter his strength spell under his breath as he got into a fight stance to take on the golems.  Derek had positioned himself in front of the two of them and got the first blow off, smashing a stone golem right in the face with a sledgehammer.  Stiles had seen Derek punch holes in cement walls, so when his blow to the first golem's head only cracked it instead of knocking it clean off or obliterating it into powder, Stiles knew they were in trouble.

"Oh crap."

What Stiles knew about himself and his fighting style is that strength is not his greatest asset, speed is.  These were some seriously well made golems, most lumbered along and anyone in decent shape can avoid getting hit by them.  These golems were at least as fast as a human, not a martial arts trained and spelled up to the gills human like Stiles, but still really fast for golems.

Stiles used his boosted strength and telekinesis to swing the sledgehammer, whacking away at the stone golems while doing everything he could to avoid the metal ones.  He managed to knock the arms off of one of the stone golems, meaning all it could really do to him was severely violate his personal space.  Vesta had cruched one and Derek had already broken apart two and was working on a third.  The metal golems were wising up however.  They decided to go all zombie hoard and swarm Stiles.

They were staggered both in width and depth making it very difficult for Stiles to jump over or around them.  He hoped to fake left and go right, but they were right on top of him.  He did what he could to jump up and push himself off of the wall in order to push himself over them, but one of them swung high and smacked him.  He had been able to roll with the blow, but the golem had still knocked him back into one of the alcoves and gave his ribs a serious bruising.  Luckily he had landed in a pile of sand.

Sand.  Why was that important?  Sand.  Sand.  Sand.  Something was making connections in his mind, but he was being distracted by Derek screaming his name and unsuccessfully trying to get to Stiles.  At least Derek's attack was distracting the golems so they were no longer swarming him and he could think for a moment.  Why would sand be so important to him?

Then it hit him.  Sand was too small to carve a rune into.  Which meant that Stiles could use his Earth magic on it.  Air too.  Can't put a rune on air.  He could use his air magic.  Air plus sand equals sand blaster.  Sand blasters smooth out things like stone...and metal.

Stiles brought forth the strongest spell he knew that required only the sand and air he was affecting, but then cranked up its intensity and focused it with all of the magic he had in him.  He stepped out of the alcove and directed the spell at the closest metal golem.  The micro-sandstorm looked like a swarm of bees sped up and sounded like a metal grinder when they hit their target.  As the sand started to break off tiny pieces of bronze they also joined with the other particles only increasing the attack's effectiveness.  The golems all looked confused, stopping their attacks to attempt to help their brother.  Stiles pushed the sand to swirl faster and harder against the skin of the flailing golem until the entire surface of it was smooth and devoid of runes.  Then it was simple enough to pick apart the weave of the golem's magic enough that the spell failed and it turned into a lifeless statue.

' _Less than a minute.  Not bad Stilinski,_ ' he thought to himself.  Vesta caught his eye and smiled.

She swung her arms back and then shoved them forward to focus her telekinesis, blasting the now inert golem into three of his brothers and knocking them all the way to the other side of the gallery.  Stiles immediately shifted his sand swarm to the next closest bronze golem.  The sixth finally realized that Stiles was the source of the attack, but before he could take more than two steps Vesta had followed his lead and hit it with a micro-sandstorm of her own.  Obviously a more powerful mage than himself, Vesta had finished smoothing her golem before Stiles was done with his second.  Derek had apparently decided that they had the metal golem problem under control because he set himself to work finishing up the final stone golem whose attacks seemed a little half-hearted as if it had resigned itself to it's fate.

By the time that the three remaining rune covered golems made their way back to them they had three bronze golem shaped battering rams to use their magic on and knock them around with.  Vesta reached into her bag and pulled out a cloth wrapped object that she threw to Stiles.  He caught it and shivered when he felt it wriggle in his hands.

"We're almost out of time.  I'll deal with the rest of them, you get past the next trap and get the vault open."

Stiles nodded and ran to the exit at the far end of the room with Derek so close he could almost feel his body heat.  They ran down the hallway until they reached the next room.  The next trap was where the floor collapsed into a hundred foot deep pit of spikes if the tiles were not stepped on in the correct order while crossing the room.  Stiles pulled out the map even though he had memorized it.  He didn't want adrenaline messing him up.  Derek waited at the entrance while he crossed the room quickly, but carefully.  Once across he would be in the vault room where he could open the vault and deactivate all the traps.

He was halfway across the room when he heard the roar of the water.  From Stiles' perspective it was as if he was being surrounded by a wave.  He had half a moment to attempt to process this before he was struck in the back and thrown across the room to the far door.  More ribs bruised and possibly broken.  He turned back and then he realized what happened.  A globe of swirling water five meters across was in the center of the room and Derek was caught in the middle of it.  Their information about the final trap had been incorrect.

Stiles ran up and tried to push his way into it, but the strength and speed of the water bit into his skin like a high pressure water knife cutting through metal.  He tried using his water magic to dispel or affect it in any way.  He tried to use his telekinesis to pull Derek out of it.  None of it worked.  He could see Derek inside attempting to fight against the current, but there was nothing solid in it for him to push or kick against.  Derek had seen the water cage forming around Stiles and he had knocked Stiles out of the way trapping himself.  Derek was now caught in this swirling globe of water and he was drowning.

Derek was doing to die.

Panic flooded Stiles and paralyzed him for a few moments before he realized what he needed to do.  All he had to do was get to the vault and open it and the water trap should release Derek.  He began sprinting toward the exit and down the hall toward the vault.  The thought of losing Derek clutched his chest so tight he thought it might crush his heart.  Derek was a pain in the ass on so many levels that Stiles couldn't even imagine to start to count them all.  The only emotions he could express with any effectiveness seemed to be anger and frustration and he didn't seemed to have emotionally matured a day since he was sixteen.  He was also stupidly selfless and protective of those he loved.  Stiles loved him for that.  Stiles loved him for all of his faults too.  Stiles loved that he powered through life at full speed when most people would have curled into a ball and given up if they'd experienced what Derek had experienced.  Stiles wanted to be there when Derek finally fixed himself and wanted to help him if Derek would let him.

All of these thoughts were running through Stiles' mind when a sound like many kitchen knives being sharpened at once rang through the hallway.  Stiles turned and did what he could to slow his perception of time, but without mind magic he was severely limited.  Instinctively he tried to use telekinesis to knock away the round blades flying toward him, but it did nothing to deter their path.

Runes.  Of course, the blades were covered with the runes.

Stiles flipped and twisted into the air at the last moment to avoid the large blades that would cut through his legs and chest, but a blade still sliced through his stomach.  He gracelessly fell to the floor with a heavy thud.  He was exploding with pain and it overwhelmed him for a moment, but then he remembered why he'd been rushing.  Derek was drowning and Stiles needed to save him.

He rolled himself over onto his stomach and pulled himself across the marble tiles.  Despite being on the ground he was dizzy and felt as though he was swaying back and forth.  The edges of his vision seemed to darken a bit.  He tried to just push life energy toward his wound, but what he needed was to do some magical surgery on himself and what he was doing was more akin to rubbing antibiotic cream into it.  He had to get across the room now, if he didn't Derek would drown.

"Oh god, is that smell me?  Uhg...guts are gross."

There were four steps that Stiles had to pull himself down.  Each time the ridge of the next step impacted his wound Stiles felt a pain that seemed to extend to every part of his body.  When he finally reached the door of the vault he pulled himself into a sitting position.  From his bag he pulled the warm writhing object Vesta had thrown him.  He unwrapped the cloth to reveal the disembodied forearm and hand, thankfully still alive.  Vesta had grown it from some skin she'd managed to get from one of the vault's keepers.  She'd managed to give it it's own respiratory and circulatory systems because they needed a live hand to open the vault.  It gave Stiles the heebie jeebies.  He reached up and pressed it against the panel on the wall.  The door to the vault slid open with the sound of stone on stone and down the corridor Stiles heard the suspended water holding Derek splash to the ground.  He let himself slump down to the ground.

"Stiles!"

A soaking wet Derek was next to him in an instant, one of his hands compressing Stiles' stomach wound while the other was frantically moving over his body, as if it might somehow find another wound on its own.

"Derek please stop freaking out, it's making it a lot harder for me to heal myself."

Derek locked eyes with him and Stiles could see that he still confused the boy he was with the man he is.

Vesta walked past him and into the vault.

"Just hold me Derek...and apply steady and even pressure to the wound.  It would be great to be losing less blood right now."

Stiles suspended the pain signals going from the wound to his brain.  He focused one at a time on healing the arteries and veins that were leaking blood out of him.  He sealed his intestines as well as he could, but the seams where he fused tissues were fragile and if he wasn't careful they could tear open again.  He was so focused on healing himself that he almost didn't notice Derek nuzzling into his neck.

Almost.

"Here is the spell book of the mage Marlene Santiago."

Stiles opened his eyes to see Vesta was standing over him holding out a large tome.  Derek pulled back.  Wow her timing sucked.

"Isn't this a valuable artifact?  You don't want to sell it?"

"What's valuable is the information and I already have a copy.  You will find some of it useful, though I don't see you taking the path of a spellcaster.  Spells are slow and I suspect that your path is that of the Battle Mage."

Stiles could feel the building anger come off of Derek as he watched the two of them make casual conversation while he and Stiles were sitting in a pool of Stiles' blood and other intestinal goo.

"You did this to Stiles so that he would help you!"

"Derek stop."

"I never forced or coerced Stiles into doing anything," said Vesta plainly.

Derek's body was tense and the anger was streaming off of him.  Stiles would be worried about him attacking Vesta if Derek wasn't holding him.  "You manipulated him by giving him this power!"

"I am paid anywhere from ten to one hundred million dollars for the use of the Stone of Moreau.  Surely I could have hired someone to help me for less than that."

"You hear that?  She gave me a hundred million dollar gift and all you've ever given me is pizza."

Derek scowled and grumbled, but Stiles could feel his anger abating by a hair.  Then the alarm klaxon started blaring.  Time to go.

"Can you walk?" asked Vesta.

"Gimme a minute."

Derek picked Stiles up and carried him in his arms.  Stiles felt ridiculous and thought about squirming out of Derek's hold, but then he thought about how he was crushed against Derek's body and that was a really good thing that he really, really didn't want to stop happening.  What's the cost of a little humiliation to be pressed up next to Derek?

It was nothing.  Totally worth it.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles was drifting on the edge of sleep, drifting along the dream world while being vaguely aware of street noise and the warmth of sunlight against the side of his face.  A kiss on his neck, just below his right ear caused his eyes to flutter open.  The glare from the sun hurt his eyes until a head of dark curly hair blocked it.  He could see the playful grin on Gianni's face that reached all the way up to his eyes. 

"You fell asleep reading again," Gianni said reproachfully, but there was no sting behind his words.

"I dreamt I was a young man in America."

"America?  Were you one of the English or one of the savages?"

"One man's savage is another man's nobleman."

Gianni rolled his eyes and Stiles grabbed him, pulling him into his lap.  He giggled and squirmed, pretending to try and get away as Stiles planted many rapid kisses onto his neck.  Eventually they settled with Gianni sitting on Stiles lap and his face nuzzling into Stiles' ear.

"Lunch is ready."

"I'd rather stay here and have my fill of you."

Gianni chuckled.  "You're insatiable."

"That's not true, you fulfill my every need."

Gianni's body stilled against him and then he pulled himself up to look Stiles straight in the eyes, a very serious look on his face.  "Before you I didn't know what love meant.  I didn't know how to love.  I never thought I could feel like I feel now."

Stiles wanted to pull Gianni so tight that they merged into one being and could never be separated.  He felt as though every cell in his body were powered by the love he got from Gianni.  He was sure he wouldn't need food, just a kiss and his touch would be enough.

"Until I met you I didn't know how deeply I could love someone or how much joy could exist in my life.  You are the sun that my whole world revolves around."

"The world doesn't revolve around the sun."

"Just trust me on this one."

And with that he pulled Gianni into a slow passionate kiss.

Stiles woke up alone in their suite in Berlin.  They had left the facility last night and gotten directly on a plane.  After a stop so that Stiles could absorb some life energy from the trees in the Tiergarten, Berlin's version of Central Park, they made their way to their hotel.  The hotel is small, opulent, and exclusive, apparently run by someone in the craft and built with wards that prevent the occupants from being tracked using magical or other means.  The idea that there was a large enough community of wealthy mages to warrant such a business pleased Stiles to no end.  If he wasn't still in the process of mending himself he would have wanted to explore, but Derek put him to bed and he'd drifted off while making sure his innards swiftly stitched back together in the right way.

Derek.  He needed to do something about Derek.  He'd let his feelings for Derek run over him and that wasn't doing him any good.  Derek was pushing him away and Stiles was letting him do it.  He could fantasize all he wanted, but Derek wasn't just going to let him into his life with open arms.  Everyone he loved has either died or betrayed him.  Logically Stiles knows you don't just bounce back from that, but he has all this love for him and Derek doesn't seem to even realize it.

He kept confusing the similarities between Derek and Gianni with them being the same.  They weren't the same.  Gianni was open to love, he just needed someone he could trust.  Derek wasn't open at all.  Not after he thinks his relationship with Kate got his family killed.  To him love is something he feels for his pack, but not something people feel for him.  And maybe the problem was that Derek didn't know how to feel loved anymore.  He received so much pain from everyone for so long he must have lost the will to let himself feel anything from anyone.  Stiles was going to have to step up and try to find a way to make him know he was loved.

There was a lot of manning up that Stiles needed to do in his life.  His newfound maturity seemed to be exclusively used to meddle in other people's life, but not his own.  The one thing he needed to do, but never wanted to face, was to tell his father.  Taking off for another country and leaving a vague note for his father was unacceptable behavior and he needed to face that like a man, not a teenage boy.  He was finally facing himself and realized that he had not been respectful to his father.  In fact, he'd been a really crappy son.  If he wanted to be treated like a man he needed to start taking responsibility like a man.  His father needed to know about the supernatural, werewolves and witches and mages and kanimas and everything else.  He would respect his father enough to make the right decisions.

Stiles had been lying in bed meditating on his thoughts when he heard the door to their suite open.  Derek came into the room and stood for a moment.  Stiles knew he was listening to Stiles breathing and heartbeat to see if he was awake.  Derek sat down on the bed and looked at him very seriously.  "I think we should go home."

"We're not done here Derek."

"We've helped her.  Let her finish the rest on her own.  Let's just pack up and leave."

"I haven't gotten what I came for."

"Your guts were hanging out.  I was holding them in my hand.  Next time you could die.  Is it really worth it?"

"Maybe I only put myself in mortal danger because that's the only time you talk to me."

Stiles regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth.  This was not the conversation he wanted to have with Derek.

"What do I tell your father when you die if I can't take your body back to him?"

Ouch.  That hurt.  Stiles had been taking a _failure is not an option_ attitude about the whole thing.  He knows he is all his father has.  He has Scott and Derek and sort of Isaac, but if he lost his father he would break.  He's not sure how he would go on.  After losing his mom, he's not sure if his father would make it if he died too.  The idea gave him pause, but he had come this far and he knows he will always regret it if he doesn't follow this through to the end.

"If you want to leave I understand, but I'm staying."

"Then I guess I have to stay," said Derek who then got up and headed toward the door.

"Derek wait."

He stopped and turned back toward the bed.

"I don't want to fight with you.  I hate fighting with you."

"It's what we do."

"No, it's not.  We bicker, but that's because of a bad dynamic we started with.  Derek could we please just..."

There's a knock on the door.  Derek raised his eyebrows at him, but his momentum was gone.  This isn't a conversation for an audience.  Derek turned and walked out of the bedroom to the front door.  Stiles decided to pull himself out of bed.  Derek must have changed Stiles' shirt for him because his clothes weren't bloody, but he still smelled on the gross side.  He wanted to shower, but leaving Vesta and Derek alone together seemed like cruel and unusual punishment for both of them.  He decided they could handle his stink.

Vesta looked at him when he sat down on the couch across from her.

"You're hungry," she said.  Probably reading his aura.

"Yeah, I haven't gotten around to breakfast yet."

"It's 4pm."

That would explain why he felt the way he did.  Vesta glanced over at Derek, then turned to Stiles and gave him a look that told him she knew what was going on.  Stiles knows she has mind magic so perhaps she read Derek's mind.  Or maybe their posture says enough.  He knows she's not reading his mind because even though he doesn't have mind magic, he knows how to keep someone out of his head.

Vesta started to go into the details of their plan, about how they will be breaking into a secret vault underneath the Reichstag where there is a portal that will take them into the catacombs underneath Saint Peter's Basilica.

"Let me see if I get this correctly," said Stiles.  "We're going to break into a secret Illuminati vault underneath Germany's parliament building so that we can access a magical portal that will take us to another Illuminati vault underneath the Vatican and steal something from the organization that secretly runs the world."

"They don't actually run the world," said Vesta plainly.  "They just think they do.  The people we're stealing the artifact for are the people that actually run the world."

"That is not actually comforting to know."

"You're going to have to memorize the maze because we're going in blind.  If you open your eyes they've got you.  Once you get pulled into one of the mirrors you will be lost in a maze of your desires.  Always searching for what you want, but never being able to attain it."

"Sounds like capitalism," Derek snarked.

Stiles smiled.  "I'm glad four years at NYU is good for something."

"It got me into grad school at Yale."

"Did they have a werewolf quota to fill?"

Derek tried to fight it, but the corners of his mouth turned up a bit at that.  Stiles considered it a small victory.

Once Vesta was done telling them the plan, she left to buy fresh intel to try and ensure they aren't surprised like last time.  Derek quietly got up and went into the other room.  Stiles knew he should eat, but this tension with Derek was leaving a toxic knot in his stomach.  He needed to talk to it out with Derek.  So he followed him into the other room.  Derek was looking out the window.

"Hey."

No reply.

"Derek...it drives me crazy when you don't talk to me.  I just...I need you okay."

"Stiles...don't make this more than it is."

"Don't make this less than it is!"

"We're just allies.  We're not even friends.

"Bullshit Derek.  We are friends.  We're more than that.  You need to stop pushing me away."

Derek finally turned toward him.  His eyes were blazing with anger.  The sudden turn took Stiles by surprise. "Stop it Stiles!  Just stop!"

"Why?"

"Because you and I can't happen.  Will.  Never.  Happen.  The sooner you get it through your thick skull and move on the better."

"There's already something between us Derek.  I feel it and I know you feel it!"

"I'm not going to change Stiles!  You're not going to remake me into this guy you want me to be!  I'm never going to be a Scott or an Isaac.  I'm never going to even be a Boyd."

"Did you ever think that, other than this hot and cold thing you've been pulling with me lately, maybe you're already the guy I need you to be?  I don't want to change you for me," Stiles could hear the strain in his own voice.  "I want to change you for you."

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"I want you to be happy Derek.  I want you to let yourself be happy."

"You don't understand anything about me."

"I know it's easier for you to step in front of a bullet than it is for you to receive a hug."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore.  You're giving me a headache."

Derek slammed the door on his way out.  Stiles could feel the strain on the threads that bound them.  Felt Derek fighting his feelings.  Stiles laid down on the bed, grabbed all of the pillows and pulled them into a hug.  He felt like Derek had stabbed him in the chest and all he wanted was to put his arms around Derek.  Even a Derek that was mad at him.  Why was love like this?

Stiles thought about how it had been for him after his mom died.  How he hadn't been able to feel anything but sorrow and loneliness.  All the hugs people had given him and all the comforting things they had said just passed over and through him without having any impact.  It had taken a long time before he could even feel the love from his father, Scott, or Melissa McCall.  Eventually he was able to slowly open himself up again.  Derek hadn't just lost his mother, Derek had lost everyone, and he believed in his heart that it was his fault that they'd died.

People are complicated.  It's not like he could change one thing, flip one switch, and Derek was going to suddenly be this open and happy person.  Derek healing these wounds was going to take time.  It didn't scare Stiles away, it only made him more determined.  Who will ever understand Derek the way he does?  To be honest, who will understand him?  Where would Stiles find a girlfriend or boyfriend who he would be able to say things like "Can't make the movies tonight because I have to stop a dark druid from murdering people in town?"  How was he supposed to fall in love with someone else when they'd have to compete in his heart with Derek, a guy who spends his life protecting others?

Before Stiles drifted off to sleep again he was sure to send an email to his father letting him know he was alive and healthy and that he would explain everything when he got back.

It was a touch surprising how far security guard uniforms and a few glamours got them.  They are through the government building and into the lower restricted areas of the building without hardly having to break stride.  Stiles was sure to alter he and Derek's faces with some life magic before they began because he didn't want the Illuminati having any security footage of their real faces.  He was also scrubbing their magical energy signatures as they went.  Vesta thought he was giving the Illuminati too much credit, but he didn't want to take any chances.  The last thing he wanted was for this caper to bring more trouble back with them to Beacon Hills.

The wards were surprisingly easy to take down and the guards were nothing special.  This makes both Derek and Stiles uneasy, but Vesta convinces them that this was because they have put way too much stock in their mirror trap.  The deeper into the basement they go the modern office hallway they are walking down gave way to masonry which gave way to a gallery carved out of the bedrock underneath the building filled with minor artifacts.  Stiles could sense the magic in them, they are certainly valuable, but they don't even slow their pace as they head across the room toward the next hallway.

When they came upon the maze Stiles tried not to look at it directly.  The mirrors themselves seemed both reflective and translucent, as if they were both there and not there.  They had no visible means of support, floating just above the ground.  Stiles suspected that they are existing in more than one reality at once.  Moreau had only begun to delve into the magic of space-time before he created the stone that allowed Stiles to share his life.  It's not an easy discipline and few have ever mastered it.  Stiles was lucky to be one of the few that even have the potential for it, though he can only barely use it to see into the future.

The plan was simple:  They close their eyes and walk though the maze.  They'd memorized the layout that was given to them and both Stiles and Vesta should be able to sense the position of the mirrors without opening their eyes.  Derek would remain between them using his nose and ears to guide him should anything come up.  Stiles decided to go first with Derek second and Vesta coming in last.  Stiles closed his eyes and started toward the maze.  He could sense Derek and Vesta behind him.  Once he got to the maze he realized that a blindfold would probably have been a good idea.  Upon entering the maze Stiles felt his magical senses completely thrown off.  This was not something he was expecting.  He took a cleansing breath to clear his head and remember the path of the maze.  He didn't need those senses to get through the maze if he could just remember the pattern.

He took step after step through the maze.  Every time he came to an intersection he made the choice of which direction to move.  Derek was so close behind him that Stiles could feel his body heat radiating into his back.  He wished he could reach back and hold Derek's hand.  That somehow seemed foolish, but Derek's touch comforts him and Stiles knows he's on edge.  He could hear Derek and Vesta whispering behind him, but he could not seem to make it out.  Why would they whisper?  What did they have to talk about besides Stiles?  He nearly missed a turn and so he stopped to orient himself.

"Guys?"

He heard nothing.  He reached out with every magical sense he had, but he could only feel the pull of Derek's thread getting tight.

"Derek?" he called.

"Stiles!"

Stiles didn't think when he heard Derek's frantic cry.  He just turned toward the voice by instinct and opened his eyes.  The moment after it happened he realized his mistake, but it was too late.  He found himself in an unfamiliar room and his head was full of cotton.  There was an unmade bed, a wardrobe, and a full-length mirror.  To his right French doors are ajar and lead out to a balcony.  He could hear the ocean.  He walked out onto the balcony and found himself up on a cliff side looking down at the crashing waves hundreds of feet below.  How did he get here?  The place felt familiar, but not.  Every part of his body felt heavy and he found himself drawn toward the bed.  A nap would be nice.  Something was missing from the bed though he can't think of what or...something.

There's something he'd forgetting.

He wanted to remember.  Is sure it is really important to remember, but couldn't for the life of him remember what that thing is.  The room was cool and the bed looked so soft and warm.  Maybe if he took a nap it would help him remember...

"Stiles!"

He heard that voice, Derek's voice.  Derek.  Derek was what was missing.  The voice had come from outside the room so Stiles rushed out the door and into the hallway.

"Derek?"

"Stiles!"

Stiles heard the direction it was coming from and began to race toward it.  He heard Derek calling for him as he rushed down the stone hallways of the empty house.  The windows were open and mist blew through them leaving the place in a permanent haze.  No matter how much he called to him and no matter how much he ran he didn't seem to be getting any closer to Derek.  Why was Derek calling to him if he kept moving away?  Did someone have him?  Had someone captured him?  He couldn't remember how he and Derek had gotten to this place.  He ran back and forth until he was out of breath.  He didn't know how long he'd been at it, but it seemed like a long time.

A thought was scratching at the back of his mind.  When he tried to focus on it, it seemed elusive.  He didn't have time for it so he tried to ignore it, but it kept at him.  Trying to tell him something.  Damn his ADD!  Why can't he just focus on one thing?  If only he could focus on Derek without the scratching in the back of his mind reminding him about something...about Derek...something about Derek.  Something about where Derek was.

He took a deep breath and tried to clear his head of all of this nonsense.  If he didn't keep running whoever had Derek would get away from him and then he would be lost forever.  He started to jog slowly down the hall when the scratch in the back of his mind felt like Derek.  How could the scratch feel like Derek?  He reached through the cotton in his head, touching the thing that felt like Derek...and it vibrated.

It vibrated because it was the thread that connected Stiles to Derek.  Connected their souls.  He could feel that pull and he could feel that connection.  The thread did not lead in the direction of Derek's cries.  It led him in a different direction.  Stiles began to move in the direction of the thread.  Through hallways and corridors that all looked the same.  Derek's cries became more insistent, pleading, but Stiles ignored them and followed the feeling of Derek inside of him, followed it back to the room where he started.  The room with the bed.  And the mirror.  The thread connecting Stiles to Derek seemed to lead him right into the mirror.  Stiles was now remembering something about a place with mirrors.  A place he and Derek had been at.  It made no sense, but the thread led right into the mirror.  He wasn't sure how it made any sense, but he followed the thread up to the mirror.

And then through it.

Once he stepped through the mirror, the fog of the world began to clear up and the cotton in his head seemed to dissipate.  It dawned on him that he was in the mirror maze and immediately shut his eyes.

"Derek?" he called out.

"Here," said a voice just a few feet away.

Stiles reached out his hands and moved toward his voice.  Once his hand hit leather, rather than the cold smooth surface of mirror, he rushed forward and threw his arms around Derek's body and buried his face into his neck.

"I got trapped," said Stiles.

"Me too," said Derek.  "But we got out."

"How did you know?"

"It didn't smell like you," said Derek.  "I followed your scent like I always do when I'm looking for you."

"Are the two of you out now?" called a voice.  Vesta.

"Yes!" said Stiles.  "We're not sure where we are now though."

Derek growled irritatedly.  "She's projecting the map into my head.  I think I have an idea of where we are."

Derek started to move away, but Stiles reached down and grasped his hand.  They made their way through the maze, getting lost momentarily, but righting themselves when they realized the walls they encountered didn't match the map.

"How long were we gone?" Stiles asked once they finally cleared the maze.

"Only a few minutes, but long enough to that we need to hurry."

Stiles certainly didn't want to tangle with any guards after they've sounded the alarms and called in the heavy hitters.  They weren't even halfway to their goal and he felt like he'd been run squashed by a steamroller.

He and Derek dropped their hands as they quickly made their way to the next room and the portal.  Stiles felt his heart tug at the loss of connection.  He wondered if Derek felt it too.

"How was being trapped in a maze of your greatest desire?" Vesta asked as she pulled the artifact out of her satchel.

"It wasn't a maze of my greatest desire," replied Stiles.  "I was in an endless building searching for Derek, but never being able to find him."

"Hmmm..." Vesta said as she separated the artifact into it's two component pieces and handed one to Stiles.  They walked to opposite sides of the portal where there is a part of the stone carved out.  Stiles wanted to ask her what the "Hmmm" was all about, but he also didn't want to waste anymore time there, so he flooded the "key" with magical energy.  He and Vesta looked at each other and then inserted the keys into the wall indentations at the same time.

At first nothing happened, and Stiles is about to say something about spilling his guts on the floor over nothing, when the archway starts to distort and then it is a portal to somewhere else.  A gate that exists in two places and no place at once.  This is very powerful magic and Stiles hoped that whoever created it is long dead because he really does not want to face them on the other side.

"Get ready to head through," Vesta instructed them.  She and Stiles removed their artifact pieces and rushed through the portal with Derek right behind.  The portal stayed open for a few more seconds before closing behind them.  Stiles breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to worry about armed guards coming up behind them.

Of course, they'd just teleported into a secret high security vault underneath the Vatican so he still had a lot on his plate.

Stiles and Vesta scanned the room for any wards that might be protecting the room.  The hope was that they'd jumped past most of the security.  Stiles found one ward, an alarm ward, and it had already been triggered.

"Guys?  We've already set off the alarm."

"Then they're coming?" asked Derek.

"I think they were hoping to surprise us," said Vesta.  "They're already here."

The air seemed to explode with violence.  Black forms seemed to billow out of nothing, spinning and wielding knives before pulling back into themselves and back to nothing.  Stiles moved himself quickly, avoiding the blades he could see, but sometimes they are slicing into him before he can sense their presence.  Stiles was so busy doing nothing but reacting to the attacks and couldn't get his bearing to counter attack.  Derek seemed to have caught one with a claw by striking blindly, but they are only coming at him faster.

"Huddle up!" Derek yells.

Derek moved quickly until his back was pressed against Stiles'.  The advantage was obvious, no one can attack their backs.  This caused the fighters to concentrate on Vesta and she gets swarmed.  Blades came at her from all directions and she was being sliced to bits.  Vesta crumbles to the ground.

"We gotta get to her!" cried Stiles.

He and Derek made their way over to her.  The going was slow because they are still fighting off attacks on themselves, but they made their way over to her.  Vesta braced herself against them and pushed herself up.  Stiles wishes he had brought some kind of weapon rather than expecting to fight with his hands.  A staff was good for fighting multiple attackers and it has a good melee range.  Even if he hadn't had martial arts training, video games taught him that.  Stiles would have thought to bring one if he hadn't had his head so full of Derek drama.  He really hoped it wouldn't cost them their lives.  So far the cuts on him have all been just flesh wounds and they hurt like hell, but eventually the blood loss will add up and take it's toll on him.  Stiles hasn't been able to concentrate enough to heal himself much.

Suddenly the attackers are gone for a moment.

"There seems to be more than three or four of them," said Stiles.

"I smell at least eight, maybe ten," said Derek.  So much for Vesta's clearly overpriced intel.

"We need an edge," said Vesta.

And just like that the assault started again.  They were each fighting off the blows of two or three attackers at once.  Suddenly two drop from above, kicking their backs and knocking Derek and Stiles forward, separating their formation.  Stiles attempted to reorient himself, but he took a few good slashes to the arm and back before he could right himself.

He started to probe forward in time as best he could, trying to see when they might reappear.  Focusing on space-time, he then noticed that he could see space bending before the warriors appear.  Of course he could.  Space and time are the same thing, we just experience them differently.  He might not be able to teleport himself, but if he's could perceive disturbances in time then he could perceive them in space.  They might have a chance.

The thing about the teleporting warriors was that the only magic they were skilled in was spatial magic.  They are good at it because they focused on it solely.  It gave a serious advantage, but also a blind spot.  Stiles tries to shift his perception to closely attune himself to the fabric of space-time.

He sensed space begin to distort to the right and behind him and turned in time to easily block the attack.  It happened again, this time to his left.  He began to get accustomed to it and with each one he got a little bit better until he was finally able to grab a bladed wrist right as the warrior was pushing himself into their shared location.  Stiles twisted the arm into a rigid position and smashed the elbow from underneath with his free arm.  The elbow broke and the warrior dropped to his knees in agony.  Stiles slid his hand up into the palm of the hand and pulled the short blade from the warrior's grip.  His other hand slapped against the warrior's head and pulled as much heat energy from it as he could, knocking the guy out and sending him into shock.  He wouldn't be getting up.

During this he took some slashes from the other two warriors on him, but he'd taken one out.  When he spun to block another attack he saw that Derek had gutted one on his own so that was two down.  He seemed to be doing fine, but it always hard to tell with Derek because he acts like he's fine right up until he collapses.  Vesta on the other hand doesn't look like she's got much time left on her feet.  She's kept her body young, but Stiles suspects that she doesn't manipulate life energy as well as he does because he was shaking off the wounds much easier than she.

Stiles saw that two of them were about to come at him at the same time from opposite sides.  He stepped back to prepare his footing and get his weight just right.  He grabbed at the first arm he could, throwing the first warrior into the second while slashing through the first's stomach with the knife.  The two go tumbling down and the next warrior that appeared paused for just a split second when he noticed the other two down.  It was enough time for Stiles to slash up across his arm, hopefully deep enough to cut tendons.  It seemed to work because he dropped the knife before teleporting away.  Stiles did a dive somersault to grab the second knife and reposition himself.

The warriors seemed to be rethinking their strategy because Stiles had taken out two and injured one other.  Derek had also inflicted his share of wounds and taken down one other, but his were more random .  They came at Stiles again, but just quick non-committal attacks as if they were just trying to keep him off guard.  Since they don't seem to be sure what to do with him he shifted his focus to Derek.  One of the warriors was about to materialize behind Derek so he shouted "Back!"

When he noticed another about to materialize to the right of Derek he shouted "Right!"

The next time he saw an attack coming Derek's way he shouted "Left!".  Derek turned and slashed upward on his left, impaling the warrior on this claws while lifting him up in the air before yanking back and letting him slam him back down onto the ground.  He shouted "Back!" and Derek spun to slash the warrior behind him with a whirlwind of claws.  The warrior went down, cut to ribbons.

They'd clearly decided Stiles was the biggest threat because they suddenly swarm him like Piranha, taking little chunks out of him.  He saw one materializing head and shoulders right in front of him and used all of his strength to stab both blades into the warrior's shoulders on opposite sides of his neck and then flip himself up and over by the knife hilts to get out of the group swarming him.  With his weight pulling at the blades as he completes the flip, he slashed through the shoulder muscles making the warrior's arms useless.  It didn't render him unconscious, but he teleported away and does not come back.

Derek was racing toward Stiles who can now see that there were only five left.  They've got enough injuries and tears in their clothes to make them distinctive.  When one materialized between he and Derek, Stiles kicked him back and onto Derek's waiting claws.  Derek lifted his body as if it were nothing.  Stiles got stabbed in the back for the move, but it didn't hit anything he couldn't live without for the next five minutes so he just ignored the pain and kept fighting.  The warriors were getting frantic and desperate, trying to attack and teleport as fast as they could, but they were obviously getting sluggish.

Stiles realized that having both knives wasn't really working to his advantage.  He threw one knife, which seemed to miss its mark as a warrior spun out of the way of it, but several yards away Vesta caught the knife.  She then threw the blade catching the warrior leaping toward Stiles at the base of his spine.  He crumbled and reached back toward it, seemingly too disoriented to teleport away.  He only succeeded to twitch on the ground.

The three remaining warriors then swarmed Vesta and she was quickly overcome.  Stiles went to move toward her, but she was already down and they renewed their assault on him.  He got a few slashes and punches in before Derek caught one off guard and finished him off spectacularly.  With only two remaining Stiles was riding on the laser focus of adrenaline.  He spun wide at one, causing the warrior to dodge right into Derek's waiting claws, then stabbed forward with his knife right where the final warrior was materializing next to him.  The warrior tried to stab his knives into Stiles with what was left of his strength, but Stiles pulled up on his blade with all of his might, slicing through the warrior's guts and dropping him to the ground.

Stiles was seriously jacked up from the fight and could hardly believe that it was suddenly over.  He was waiting for another assault, but one doesn't come.

"So much for teleporting Catholic ninjas!"

Derek raised the eyebrows.  "Really Stiles?"

"What would you call them?"

Derek paused to think.  With a sigh and much resignation he said "Teleporting Catholic ninjas."

Stiles smiled.

Stiles reached down and pulled large amounts of life energy from the fallen warriors closest to him.  He pushed some of it into his own wounds as he made his way over to Vesta.  He kneeled down next to her body and rolled her onto her back.  Then he laid his hands onto her form and began knitting all of her gashes together, healing all of the arteries and veins first to stop the blood loss.  He then stimulated her bone marrow with life energy to send blood production into hyperdrive.

"Thanks," she whisperd.

"It's a lot easier when someone else helps, isn't it?" said Stiles.

Vesta opened her eyes and smiled at him.  "Yes, it is."

He returned the smile.  "You kinda suck at teamwork."

"Never had a team before."

"Can you walk?"

"Just barely."

He offered his hand and pulled her up with himself.  Several wounds that were just starting to stitch themselves together scream out at him.  He might be in shock.  He really hoped he doesn't pass out once the shock wears off because they need both of them to activate the next portal and get out of there.

Stiles knew they should hurry in case the fighter that escaped called in reinforcements, but he didn't quite have the energy in him to rush.  They opened the vault fairly easily and Vesta searched the shelves to find what she came for.  Stiles didn't need to search because he could feel the stone calling him as soon as he got near the vault.  He walked over to it and lifted it into his hand.  Even without clasping it tight in his hand he could feel the love begin to radiate into him from the Stone of Gianni.

Derek came up behind him, so close that Stiles could feel his body heat radiating into him.

"Can we go home now?"

Stiles leaned back so that his back was against Derek's chest.  "Yeah, we can go home."

The keys to this portal were in the vault with them.  It took them to a private art vault in Paris near the Louvre designed to keep people out, not in.  There a waiting car took them to a house hidden behind a glamour in Montmartre.  They passed by the Moulin Rouge and Stiles wished they had time to stop, though he had no idea what time it was and doubted it was still open.

Vesta seemed intimately familiar with the house and Stiles wondered if it was her own.  She pointed to their room and to the kitchen, telling them to help themselves to whatever.  Derek didn't bother to protest the sleeping arrangements even though there were clearly other empty bedrooms.  Everyone needed time to heal, so after piling some baguettes high with cured meats and stinky cheese, he and Derek retired to their room with the plates.

Stiles had thought of doing this anyway, but the events of the last couple of days had made it clear to Stiles how important this was.

"Hold out your hand Derek."

"Why?  What will it do to me?"

"Do you trust me Derek?"

Derek's eyes dropped to the floor.  There was pain in his face.

"Do you trust that I would never do anything to harm you?"

Derek slowly raised his eyes to meet his gaze.  "Yes."

Derek held out his hand and Stiles placed the Stone of Gianni into it.  He closed Derek's hand over it and held it there with both of his.  Derek made a noise as if the air was being sucked out of his lungs.

"Do you feel that Derek?  That's the love I have for you.  All the walls you've put up around yourself so that you feel nothing is keeping out that love."

Derek tried to open his hand, but not very hard because Stiles easily held it fast in both of his.  Tears began to stream down Derek's face and he slowly crumbled to his knees.  Stiles slid down to the floor with him.

"It's...I... It's too much.  I don't think..."  Derek choked back a sob.  "I feel so...empty all the time."

"I know Derek, but it doesn't have to be like that.  We can do this together.  It's not going to be quick and it's not going to be easy, but I promise you that I'll be there with you every step of the way if you let me.  I love you Derek Hale, even if you won't let yourself feel it."

Derek's free hand gripped tightly at Stiles' jacket, like he was holding on for his life.

"Everyday," said Derek.  "Every day I wake up and wish I weren't alive.  Laura was all I had to live for.  When she died, avenging her kept me going.  But after we killed Peter...I had nothing.  I didn't create my pack in order to fight the Alpha pack.  I created it so that I had a reason to live.  When Erica and Boyd..."

Stiles pulled him close and Derek seemed to droop onto Stiles like a 200 pound rag doll.

"I don't want to love you Stiles because all I think is that you'll leave me or die or...betray me."

"That's not going to happen.  I will always be there for you and I will always be your friend, no matter what happens...but I love you Derek.  I mean...I'm in love with you.  As in I want the rest of my life to be you and me against the world.  I want our house that we own together to someday be filled with the sound of little werewolf feet."

Derek snorted a short laugh through his tears.  His head fell against Stiles'.

"I'm ready to take this slow, but you have to promise to keep moving forward with me.  Can you promise that you'll never stop trying and I'll promise the same."

Derek lifted his head, smearing his tears on Stile's face, until their lips brushed against each other, their breath becoming one.

"I'll never stop trying," said Derek.  "I'll never stop trying for you."

*****

Derek was silent on the flight to Venice.  They rented a car and stayed in a hotel on the mainland.  Stiles went out and found a hardware store to get a shovel and other tools for breaking into coffins.  His Italian was still not modern, but he made do.  They nap for a few hours, Derek instinctively holding him tight while he slept.

After midnight they headed to the cemetery and Gianni's grave.  Derek moved the slab covering the grave and they started digging.  Stiles knew this was closure, but it felt like opening old wounds.  Once they got to the remains of the coffin that hadn't rotted away Derek took over clearing the dirt away.  There were Gianni's bones in front of him, but Stiles knew this was not his Gianni.  His Gianni was alive in his heart and always would be.  This was just the vessel that held him for a time.

"If you put the stone back, won't someone else just steal it again?" asked Derek.

Stiles looked up at Derek, his living breathing love, the vessel and soul that he wants to pour his love into.

"I'm going to pull all of the magic out of it.  It's just going to be a rock again.  Any future grave robbers will think it's a fake and leave it."

Stiles closed his eyes and pulled the magic out of the stone.  He could feel the energy and the love that Moreau had put into it flow into him until the stone was inert.  There was a part of him that thought of making a stone for Derek, but he knew what Derek needed most of all was a living person to give him love and fill him up, not a magical stone.

Derek recovered the grave while Stiles sat nearby.  Once he was finished he walked over and pulled Stiles into his arms.  He pressed his face into Derek's chest and lost himself in the feel of Derek next to him.  Derek kissed the top of his head.  Stiles looked up into those dark eyes to see the beginnings of an openness he'd never seen in him before.

"Let's go home."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this last chapter took so long. I was moving around a lot my last month in Europe after I left Berlin and didn't have any private space to collect my thoughts and write. I've vowed to not post any more fics in the future until I have at least a first draft finished. I know in a lot of ways I have written this as a series of related short stories rather than chapters of a larger story. The style changes a bit as does the type of story, but all from within the same continuity. There's some seriously odd turns at times. I think it gets confusing if you read it all at once. (You tell me.) I apologize. It's totally my bad. I'm still growing as a writer. I hope the parts you liked overcame my shortcomings.
> 
> I want to thank everyone who has stayed with me the whole time. This is the longest piece of fiction I have ever written. It's got some major flaws, but I learned a lot and grew as a writer creating it.
> 
> I've been posting the fic that I wrote when I had writers block on this piece. It's called [The Hale Beast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/890866/). I'd like to think that it's a better work of writing, but I suppose that's all a matter of opinion.


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